Oh, Lord. I'm gonna have to start buying Depends if I'm gonna keep watchin' this stuff.
Nebraska football: If you've gotta cry, it's better to laugh yourself into it. IF YOU WANT to know why newspapers are doomed, doomed, doomed . . . it's because they spend millions and deploy scores of journalists to cover stuff and give us their learned opinions, but still can't come up with something as screamingly funny -- and ultimately truthful -- as some guys posting from home in their spare time.
When faced with questions so fraught with scientific, moral and ethical complexities as embryonic stem-cell research, top brass of the University of Nebraska now have been reduced to making arguments they wouldn't accept from their teen-agers for even a nanosecond.
"But DAAAAAAAAD, all the cool kids are doing it!"
"But DAAAAAAAAD, Malia and Sasha's dad says it's OK!"
"But DAAAAAAAAD, everybody will make fun of me! You're making me into a laughingstock!"
"But DAAAAAAAAD, it's not like I bought the beer with a fake ID. All I did was have two or three of them."
"But DAAAAAAAAD, everybody's going to the party. If I don't go . . . Gawwwwwd, I'll be hated. Nobody will be my friend."
I THINK that covers all the arguments made by NU President J.B. Milliken and others in favor of expanding embryonic stem-cell research at the university's med center in Omaha. From the Omaha World-Herald:
University of Nebraska scientists don't need formal approval from the Board of Regents to expand their work with human embryonic stem cells, NU President J.B. Milliken said Friday.
Citing an Oct. 2 legal opinion from the university's general counsel, Milliken said existing state and federal laws, as well as university policy, allow scientists to use new lines of embryonic stem cells, once they are approved by the National Institutes of Health.
After more than an hour of public comment on the topic during a Board of Regents meeting, Milliken recommended that the board let current policy stand.
“Embryonic stem cell research holds enormous promise, and if the University of Nebraska is to be a leading research university, it should be appropriately engaged in this research,” he said.
“To do otherwise would unnecessarily limit the opportunities for discoveries to save and improve lives. It would also risk great harm to the reputation of the university and damage our ability to recruit and retain outstanding research and clinical faculty.”
Milliken said Friday that the regents had had the opportunity for review during the past several months and that he was now prepared to open the door to expanded research. He said the board has three options: affirm the existing policy, revise it or do nothing.
The Milliken recommendation upset anti-abortion advocates.
Since the Obama administration announced a change in the federal guidelines last spring, abortion opponents have been urging regents to “draw a line in the sand” to stop NU scientists from embarking on expanded research involving cells derived from human embryos that would otherwise be discarded.
“This is unbelievable what was stated here today,” said Chip Maxwell, executive director of the Nebraska Coalition for Ethical Research. “It's not for the president or any administrator to set this policy.”
Regents Chairman Kent Schroeder said the board probably will take up the issue at its November meeting.
Julie Schmit-Albin, executive director of Nebraska Right to Life, said she and other abortion opponents will continue to urge the regents to reject expanded embryonic stem cell research.
“I will be here,” she said of the November meeting.
The regents agreed to take public comment on the research after anti-abortion groups announced that they planned to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting.
The 12 people testifying in favor of the research included Omaha philanthropist Richard Holland, who is founder and chairman of the pro-research group Nebraskans for Lifesaving Cures; Lynne Boyer, daughter of the late Charles Durham, whose family has donated tens of millions of dollars to build research towers on the NU Medical Center campus; and Rik Bonness, a former Husker All-American football player whose two sons have Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes.
OH . . . I FORGOT an important instance of NU leadership's unleashing of its inner 15-year-old. "I'll do what I want, and you can't stop me."
But frankly, my gut tells me all you have to know about the university's willingness to scrap a hard-won cease-fire between it and Nebraska pro-life groups is this: Holland and Durham. The University of Nebraska, like most of us pathetic creatures, adheres unswervingly to the Golden Rule.
He who has the gold, rules.
It's embarrassing. And I'm not referring to the regents' potential for doing something that causes all the other cool scientists not to want to play with the little Cornhuskers anymore.
No, what's embarrassing is that a pre-eminent university can wade into a moral and ethical quagmire and think the mere spouting of inanities -- ones, in fact, barely worthy of teen-agers who act "young" for their age -- is enough to let it emerge without a lungful of fetid water.
What's embarrassing is that newspaper columnists such as the World-Herald's Robert Nelson can graduate from UNL and still think an effective column in favor of the university's stem-cell stance is little more than calling pro-lifers "zealots" and "rabble." Oh . . . that and regurgitating the party line -- if the Board of Regents gives in to the zealous rabble, that all the cool kids won't play with us anymore, blah blah blah, ad infinitum.
C'mon, I went to LSU, and I couldn't be that all-out dumb even after finishing off a couple of fifths of Early Times.
YOU WANT SCIENCE? I'll give you some basic biology.
Embryos are the result of the union of the female egg and the male sperm. When implanted into the womb and left alone (other than being given nourishment), they naturally grow into fetuses, and fetuses ultimately become (given enough academic degrees and fed enough bulls***) presidents of state universities spouting inanities to elected officials.
At what point do you say "not human, not human, not human, not human . . . AH! HUMAN! Can't gratuitously dissect it anymore!"? That is a question scientists have proven themselves unequipped to answer.
That's the realm of philosophers, theologians and clergy. That's "heavy" stuff, and the University of Nebraska should be ashamed -- in its cavalier handling of the weightiest material -- to have been revealed as such a collection of ethical and mental lightweights.
The chill is chilling, the wind ain't thrilling, but we can weather the storm! Who cares how much under the norm? We've got the Big Showto keep us warm.
I can't remember a worse October. Just watch that low pressure form!
When Johnny Cash gave young Rosanne "The List" of 100 American songs she had to know, he knew what he was doing. And, man, was he right to put "Sea of Heartbreak" on it.
Here's the first, and best known, recording of the classic by Hal David and Paul Hampton -- Don Gibson's 1961 country Top-10 hit.
A Baton Rouge city prosecutor has been placed on paid leave as part of an FBI probe into Baton Rouge area judicial systems, WAFB's Jim Shannon reports.
City Prosecutor Flitcher Bell was placed on leave Wednesday, said Parish Attorney Mary Roper.
Roper says the offices of the city prosecutor were searched by FBI agents last week who executed a search warrant.
The federal probe, headed up by the FBI, is underway into activities inside the 19th Judicial District Court, Baton Rouge City Court, and the East Baton Rouge Parish Public Defender's Office, sources tell WAFB 9NEWS.
Sources tell Shannon the investigation centers around several issues including the reduction of bail bonds in certain cases and the acceptance of bribes in exchange for dropping charges
It is not clear why Bell is being investigated.
A federal grand jury met to hear testimony in the matter Thursday.
While English and Welsh "freshers" were out getting pissed last week, Rifleman Craig Wood, 18, was otherwise occupied after a short stint in Afghanistan.
When a country has its knickers in such a twist as Britain -- literally -- that's when sharia starts to look not half bad by comparison.
By the time it's a common thing for college students and other "drunken yobs," as the Daily Mail put it, to shuffle down city streets with their drawers around their feet -- at least when they're not pissing on war memorials -- you're either musing about sharia (or something close enough), or you're looking for a good monastery to hide out in as the Dark Ages descend and civilization disappears.
The image of a drunk student urinating on a war memorial has provoked a furious backlash from relatives who had laid wreaths of poppies in tribute to their loved ones.
John Ievers, the grandson of a World War I soldier who died in 1917, branded student Philip Laing, 19, a 'drunken idiot' for desecrating the memorial in Baker's Pool, Sheffield.
The 49-year-old software sales consultant said: 'I am annoyed - he's a drunken idiot.
'He should be made to clean the streets of Sheffield or do some kind of community service.'
Mr Ievers placed the tribute - a solitary wooden cross with poppy decoration - to his grandfather on the memorial on Remembrance Day last November. Edwin Ievers was 32 when he was killed in France in October 1917.
The youth was one of 2,000 university students taking part in an organised seven-hour pub crawl in Sheffield, during which many familiar scenes of debauchery were seen.
Half-naked women collapsed on the street while young men ran among passing traffic.
But by far the worst moment came when Laing, a sports technology student at Sheffield Hallam University, staggered to the World War I memorial and urinated on it. Other revellers seemed oblivious, but the incident was reported to security staff who washed down the memorial with water.
'He should be made to clean the memorial at the very least,' Mr Ievers added. 'He must have been paralytic.
'I don't think he should be flogged in the streets or anything but there should be some reparation.
'But this sort of thing goes on all the time in Sheffield with freshers week [Freshmen week -- R21]. They had to take the fountain out because someone was killed. They would do a pyjama jump but too many of them came down with hypothermia.'
ACTUALLY, after looking at that picture, I think flogging in the streets might not be such a bad idea. Flog one, teach 1,000?
What I see in these pictures -- and in stories such as thisand this-- is a culture at the end of its days of wine and roses. A culture living for its distractions, because distractions are the only reasons it has anymore.
The distractions, meantime, are having the last laugh.
Getting "stewed" in your own juices not only is a bitch, it's also fraught with irony.
In one day, in one newspaper, two sections told a tale of two cities.
Both of them were Omaha, and they were as different as black and white.
Yesterday afternoon, I went out to fetch the paper -- yes, the Omaha World-Heraldstill has an evening edition, and we still take it -- and at the bottom of the Midlands section front, there was this column by Mike Kelly.
HERE'S HOW it started . . . and note, please, that it's just one movement of a long and ongoing symphony of civic self-congratulation:
A U.S. women’s sky-diving champion who has lived on both coasts made a big leap of faith — and moved to Omaha.
After nine months here as associate director of the nonprofit organization Kaneko, she says cosmopolitan Omaha “disrupts preconceived notions” of the Midwest as seen in movies and on TV. And she sees people constantly trying to improve the metro area.
“What makes Omaha very special for me,” said Jacquie Scoones, “is that people have such a strong sense of pride in the city — and they don’t just say that, but actually invest in relationships. I don’t think I’ve met anyone yet who doesn’t volunteer for something.”
Scoones didn’t parachute into Omaha. She drove from the East Coast in January, arriving eight hours ahead of a snowstorm. But she has come to enjoy another kind of local climate.
“Omaha has an extraordinary climate of possibilities that I’m growing to love,” she said Monday. “I want to live and grow old in a place where people younger than me are fiercely invested in building a city where their children will want to live.”
Scoones, 50, said she appreciates what previous generations have done for Omaha but sees a fierce community investment by young professionals and others in their 30s and 40s.
OMAHA: City of Possibilities. That has a nice ring to it.
Cosmopolitan Omaha disrupting preconceived notions of the Midwest as Green Acres writ large. Damn straight! Fly over THAT, coastal America.
It's almost enough to provoke hubris in the modest, practical Midwestern soul.
And it's true -- Omaha is a great place to be now. It's a city "on the move," with a critical mass of creative individuals determined to keep up the momentum.
Dare I say it? The Big O is the place to be, a veritable creative commons . . . for the white, the well-heeled and the well-educated.
BECAUSE ON THE FRONT of the Living section, we got to hear about Cool Omaha's dysfunctional doppelganger. the one that's largely black, bad-off and ill-educated.
The Omaha that leaves some of its citizens behind. The Omaha that doesn't dare make any sudden moves when pulled over by a cop. The Omaha that, when it does go away to college and gets that degree, doesn't come home to where the alienation is.
As for the hosts, Tom Hoarty was curious. Race remains such a pressing issue. Take Obama's beer summit a few months ago with the black Harvard professor who had to force his way into his own home after the door jammed and the white Cambridge police officer who arrested him.
Margaret, though, reflected on something more personal: how her childhood friend and next-door neighbor was black, how it was OK that they played together but spending the night at her black friend's house was off-limits.
This sparked a similar memory for Loretté. She was the black girl who invited her white friend for a sleepover in 1969. Her friend couldn't believe a black family's home could be as nice as Loretté's was.
Memories and experiences segued into larger questions.
About the degree to which the news media perpetuate racial stereotypes and the degree of demand for such conflict.
About how stereotypes play out. Valerie being told more than once that “you don't sound like you're black.” Ed being told he's not black enough.
“It's probably not a whole lot different,” he told the five white Catholics, “if someone asks, ‘Are you Catholic? Are you really Catholic?'”
Tom Hoarty noticed who was missing at the table: Latinos.
“We just had a roof put on our house,” he said. “The entire crew was Latino.”
Rita pointed out that you have to go out of your way in Omaha to really mingle with other races and social classes.
“How many African-American professionals do you see?” Ed asked.
Tom Tilden reflected on his job. “There are not many. Not many. There's one, that I know of.”
Valerie: “We just don't have that. When you go to Chicago … you see African-Americans that look like me that are in power-play positions.”
Take D.C. and Baltimore, said Loretté.
“I had a blast. So many people who looked like me. Black people supported one another ...”
Ed: “What's different about Omaha? … We have (four) Fortune 500 companies and no African-Americans reporting to the CEOs.”
Tom Hoarty: “I don't have an answer. … Omaha is a very divided city.”
Margaret: What happens to successful black students who graduate from college?
Valerie: “They vow never to return.”
Ed asked what the two Toms would do if the police pulled them over. Hoarty said he'd dig for his license and registration. Tilden said he'd demand to know why.
Ed said black men have been warned about making a move for the glove box or appearing mouthy to a cop.
They talked about where black people are missing in Omaha: boardrooms, the College World Series, restaurants.
“Why am I the only black person here?” Valerie said she asks herself when dining out at nicer restaurants.
Loretté got that feeling when she attended a classical music concert at the Holland Center.
They talked about blacks “dumbing down” to be acceptable. About stereotypes they wish would die, about interracial relationships.
Loretté really struggled when her nephew married a white woman, a pattern she felt played out way too frequently among black men. And yet she describes her nephew's wife as “wonderful” and as “my niece.”
LIFE DOES GET complicated, doesn't it? Cities, too. And people? Don't get me started.
I am grateful for the Omaha that's cosmopolitan, creative and forward-looking. I am ashamed that it's mostly for people who are white (and reasonably well educated) like me.
The Omaha I enjoy -- the one attracting all the go-getters to this former "flyover" burg -- is, alas, no reason to gloat.
It would be too easy, and too deadly, to sip martinis in the Old Market and feel so very self-satisfied that we're not like some redneck justice of the peace in Louisiana. Especially when Bad Omaha -- the place where hopes and dreams go to get they ass capped -- lurks just beyond the skyline . . . whispering "j'accuse."
Deficits are killing Louisiana, which happens to be where I was born, raised and educated (but don't tell anybody).
You have your revenue deficit in these hard times, which has devastated the state budget and lots of things that hardly could stand more devastation -- like education, public-health and social services.
You have your infrastructure deficit, which leaves Louisiana with an above-average amount of crumbling roads, schools, sewers, jails and public facilities.
You have your peace-and-quiet deficit, which manifests itself in astronomical rates of violent crime and murder.
You have your knowledge deficit, which leaves the Gret Stet with a spectacularly underskilled workforce, an abysmal high-school graduation rate and a corresponding lack of residents with college educations.
And, of course, you have your wealth deficit in a state that, ironically, is incredibly rich in natural resources and economic potential. (See DEFICIT, PEACE-AND-QUIET and DEFICIT, KNOWLEDGE above.)
BUT THE DEFICIT Louisiana perhaps is best known for -- and which, in its own way, directly impacts each of the above deficit categories -- is its integrity deficit. This manifests itself in a certain Pelican State disdain for bourgeois American standards for a functioning civic society . . . and reasonably honest, functional self-government.
Unfortunately, the state has had many opportunities to showcase its glaring integrity deficit over the years, but perhaps none ultimately will prove any more glaring than the sad, racist soap opera playing itself out in Tangipahoa Parish. That's where the morally and judicially pornographic Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell has been refusing to marry interracial couples for 34 years now . . . and getting away with it.
Of course, if all you had to go on was the superficial coverage in the national and local press, you'd hardly know this. You would know a lot about this or that outraged advocacy group, and you'd know that Bardwell is defending his indefensible bigotry to the last white sheet, and you'd know that Gov. Bobby Jindal and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (but not U.S. Sen. David Vitter) have issued pro-forma denunciations of this throwback to Jim Crow, as well as demands for resignation, removal, etc., and so on.
What you wouldn't know -- at least not without a lot of reading between the lines -- is that lots of people (and elected officials)knew about Bardwell's official racism for a long time yet did nothing.
They didn't even complain -- at least not in any way that got anybody's attention.
IT'S THE EVERYDAY, ongoing integrity deficits that set the stage for the really spectacular ones Louisiana occasionally stages to grab the world's attention. (See Edwards, Gov. Edwin and Duke, David. Oh . . . and let's not forget Jefferson, U.S. Rep. William of cold-cash fame.)
What's unusual about the Bardwell case is that this long-term, ordinary travesty of justice and pedestrian (remember, this is the old segregated South we're talking about) offense against common decency somehow morphed into an Edwin Edwards-sized scumbag spectacular. And that the reason for that was how very, very ordinary Bardwell's Jim Crow show was in that corner of Louisiana.
Thirty-four-years-and-running ordinary.
An unrepentant racist being returned to public office unopposed all those years ordinary.
Nobody lifting a finger in favor of Christian decency, fairness and the U.S. Constitution ordinary.
"Hey! Why so upset? What's the big deal, anyway?" ordinary.
THE REST of America, oddly enough, finds it quite extraordinary. Much of the Western world finds it extraordinary, too. We find it extraordinary that virtually no one in the entire state of Louisiana, during this man's decades-long reign of error, ever tried to "do the right thing."
Wow.
We Americans historically have taken a lot of pride in our foundational notion that no man is above the law. And we find it extraordinary that a piss-ant jurist in a piss-ant Louisiana burg somehow got his knickers in a twist about race-mixing, decided that longstanding constitutional law (and the teaching of every major Christian denomination) was full of crap, then set about putting one man's errant opinion above the law.
Call me an N-word lover -- and, trust me, someone in Louisiana will -- but I find that highly offensive, both as a Christian and as an American.
AND THE PREVAILING MEME in Louisiana . . . that is, apart from pro-forma political hand-wringing and the "Booboisie for Bardwell" knuckle-draggers? It's this: You'll have a difficult time getting rid of a backwoods judicial bigot in the Gret Stet.
That integrity deficit is a real killer. You get too far in the integrity hole and you start finding it amazingly easy to dismiss "no man is above the law" as just another quaint Yankee notion.
You start to find all kinds of reasons that Bubba not only should be above the law, but should be able to make it up himself -- especially when it's only black folk and (Negro)-lovers who get screwed over in the process.
And that's the point at which you transcend mere Louisiana Hayride graft and skulduggery and begin to plumb the full depths to which a sociopolitical freak show such as the Gret Stet can sink.
If you have the stomach for it, it's going to be a hell of a show. Literally.
In Fresno, Calif., a pro-choicer forgets the "violent pro-lifers are really scaring us poor defenseless victims, oh please help us somebody" script and unshackles her inner Rambo.
To the world, it seems as if Louisiana has a justice of the peace problem -- the Tangipahoa Parish official who refuses to marry interracial couples.
Indeed, that's the problem the state's elected officials want people to think they're trying to address. Gov. Bobby Jindal and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu have condemnedthe practices of Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell and want his resignation . . . or his removal by a judicial commission.
But the problem the press reports and the problem Louisiana pols addressed isn't the real problem in the sad case of some bumpkin JP suffering from a case of arrested moral and legal development. As I said on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, the problem is that Louisiana tolerates the likes of Keith Bardwell.
Citizens of Tangipahoa Parish's 8th Ward have tolerated Bardwell for 34 years -- he has run unopposed every election.
Interracial couples whom Bardwell has refused to marry -- he says he's declined to officiate four mixed-race ceremonies over the years -- have tolerated illegal discrimination against them, going quietly elsewhere to be married by another justice.
Other justices of the peace -- who well knew the score in Robert, La. -- never made a stink about blatant violations of state law and the U.S. Constitution.
Bardwell said a justice of the peace is not required to conduct a marriage ceremony and is at liberty to recuse himself “from a marriage or anything else.”
He said the state attorney general told him years ago that he would eventually get into trouble for not performing interracial marriages.
“I told him if I do, I’ll resign,” Bardwell said. “I have rights too. I’m not obligated to do that just because I’m a justice of the peace.”
THE OFFICIAL charged with enforcing the state's laws (and I'd love to know which attorney general it was) told the racist JP he'd eventually get in trouble. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.
But the AG -- like every other Louisiana official who knew what Bardwell was up to (or, rather, not up to) -- couldn't be bothered to report the errant official's discriminatory ways to the state's judicial board . . . or to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Dat's Louisiana for you.
See, in Louisiana, you have priorities -- good food, strong coffee, juke joints, hunting and fishing, getting your bass boat in the water, beer, Mardi Gras, graft and LSU football. Then, way down on the list, you have justice and other silly crap.
And that's the problem -- Louisiana's bass-ackwards priorities and its tolerance of the kind of social and moral retardation that makes the Western world go "HUH???"
The Constitution of the United States -- as amended by Congress, ratified by the states and interpreted by the Supreme Court -- is pretty clear about some things. And since 1967 and Loving v. Virginia, the right of Americans to miscegenate in wedded bliss has been the law of the land.
Even in backwoods Louisiana.
WE KNOW a minor cog in the stripped gears of the Louisiana judiciary has a problem with that. And we also know, from reading the comments on various news stories, that other Louisianians do, too:
Brian B You hand wringers are so pathetic. Boo hoo for the poor couple. Well, if their parent's had raised them right this wouldn't even be an issue because they wouldn't be together in the first place. If you bleeding hearts don't like the values of us "backwards racists" then feel free to pack your crap and leave. I55 is a direct route out of here as is I12. Amtrak comes by every day and they can haul you too.
Klansman Where is the Klan when you need 'em? Time to drive the membership upward again and reclaim our country!
Bill The races should be separate but equal. Negro men should leave the white women alone and stick to their own race. No mulatto children should be happening. It's the browning of America. I stand by Mr. Bardwell's decision.
Donna I am from Louisiana and can tell you that what Mr.Bardwell has said and done has not embarrassed me or my state. He is saying exactly what we are thinking. Even Obama, is NOT black but half white and then again,his black father and family disowned him.But then he was forced to marry a black woman,even though he was raised by whites.Very few people would condone their children marrying a part black person and bringing biracial children into this world. They Do NOT fit in or are welcome most times and that is a fact. If course it is different with movie stars and others with money and especially in CA where that is an everyday norm. Very few blacks marry each other and choose to have children out of wedlock. Why are they so focused on marrying white women?Even Mr. Bardwell makes that observation. On the other hand, according to the black women I have spoken to,they are furious when a "good" black man marries a white woman as there are so few young black men alive or not incarcerated.Having equal rights does not mean that we have to accept biracial marriages.
Guest first of all, who contacted the news for publicity? this sounds like a stunt to yell "RACISM", this is where it is wrong. I personally think this couple just wants attention. No harm done, really,they did get married after all. If the JP did not want to marry them, he should have said so.......... thats right, he did. So what is the real problem. People are turned away by one person or the next everyday and noone says anything. This is not racism, it is sicknening. The man should not have to be asked to resign because he does not want to marry someone. If that is the case, we need to have most of the preachers, judges, attorneys and our own parents resign from their duties because they would not do what we wanted. give me a break!!!! Everytime I look at the TV there is someone yelling racism for some reason, rather it is because a store says "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason", or because someone looked at someone wrong. Things are getting out of hand with the racism cards. I am not saying the man is totally right, but he is not totally wrong either, let it go, we have enough people trying to steel the lime light. you have had your fifteen minutes of fame.
Gaynell Holmes LEAVE THE JUSTICE ALONE! Finally we have a decent Godly human being! Someone who stands behind his beliefs. Martin Luther King stood behind his that was ok.
Bobby Jindal I DID NOT vote for you and now NEVER will. I think WE THE PEOPLE should do an online petition in the Justice's behalf. And one asking for YOUR resignation Bobby Jindal!
Gaynell Holmes Hey I am white and I think we should stay with white. not any other as you've listed.
These white girls are traitors to their white race!
Guest I'm sorry I think this guy had every right to deny marriage to this couple. He didn't tell them they couldn't get married, he said he wouldn't marry them & referred them to another person who would marry them. How many churches refuse to marry people because they are different religions or have previously been married or because they don't believe they are compatable after completing pre-marriage counciling? Why should this be any different. I support inter racial marriages, but I think this man should have the right to refuse marriage to any one he chooses to do so, especially when the church does it on a daily basis.
keeping it real This day in age, marriage is a joke anyway. If God was truly at the center of any marriage, this wouldn't be an issue. Bardwell has been an elected leader for over 30 years....just maybe, he's on to something....even if it's not the most popular thing according to mainsteam America? Why penalize a man for his convictions?...oh yeah, that has become the American way!
All I gotta say to the couple is....Prove Bardwell wrong. The odds are against you.
hogatae If the Justice of the Peace would have been African American, Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, and/or the couple was white and Italian, Italian and Indian racism would not be an issue. History is repeating itself, when someone gets their little feelings hurt they want to cry racism every time. Keith Bardwell has his conscience to deal with as well, even though he is an elected official. If and I say if, Mr. Bardwell broke the law then deal with that issue. Just because there is a law doesn’t mean the law is the right thing to do, after all when there is a jury convened they have the right to Jury Nullification if they think the law is a bad law and Mr. Bardwell has the same right. Seems to me if he were a racist he would not have performed ceremonies for black couples in the past nor would he have guided the couple to some one that would have performed the ceremony. That does not sound like a racist to me. Personally I think they do have the right to be married. Mosses married an Ethiopian I don’t have a problem with that.
Truth Did it ever occur to anyone that this may all be a ruse. The New World Order controlled media likes to promote a stereotype of a "racist south" to keep us divided. Perhaps someone in the media paid off the Justice and the couple. I assume the Justice will not be charged even though he committed a crime. He will be asked to resign , which he will do. All three will be paid a hefty sum in secret and the media will have the race-baiting story they wanted.
HERE'S THE DEAL. Especially since Hurricane Katrina, Louisianians have been keen on collecting as much federal aid as Congress can be persuaded to appropriate. Something about them being Americans, too . . . yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah.
Of course, being "American" presupposes one is subject to American law, shares certain "American" values, adheres to basic tenets of American democracy -- you know, all the stuff we take for granted in Places Not Louisiana.
So maybe Louisiana needs to decide. Is it American or is it not?
I mean, you know how those mixed-nationality marriages are . . . they almost never work out. And who the hell wants to waste good money on a bad marriage?
AND I THINK we at 3 Chords & the Truth now can answer -- musically and with full confidence -- the burning question "Will Louisiana ever stop shooting itself in the foot . . . and other interesting places?"
The answer is "no."
But anyway, since it's the '60s again, and since elected officials in the Gret Stet are still doing '60s-stupid (not to mention flat-out evil) things, I guess it's time to start the protests. Right here.
Right now.
LOUISIANA, this episode of 3 Chords & the Truthis for you. From your perspective, that is not a good thing.
For everybody else, I think you'll enjoy this week's edition of the Big Show.
This is the video I'm not showing you of Balloon Boy puking on the Today Show. It also is the stupid, crass and at times hateful "rap" video the obnoxious Heene boys and their flakeoid parents posted to YouTube -- and which I won't be showing you.
LIKEWISE, above are the Wife Swap clips featuring the Heenes that you don't need to see, and with which I will not bother you. Ditto the CNN clip of Falcon Heene saying -- when asked about his hiding in the attic when everyone thought he had floated away in the family flying saucer -- that "You had said that we did this for the show."
And, if you wish, imagine the black rectangle is video of what I'm sure will be a press conference by embarrassed sheriff's officials saying, no, the whole thing wasn't really a publicity stunt. They think. Maybe.
Or, you might imagine that the non-video is yet another clip of Richard Heene getting all outraged that people might think the worst of attention whores who put their kids in crass YouTube videos, post incessantly to TV "interactive" sites, subject themselves and their children to the likes of Wife Swap and otherwise spend their eccentric lives jumping up and down up and down up and down, screaming "HEY! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! DON'T YOU REALLY WANT TO LOOK AT ME?!?"
A justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple last week because of concern for the children who might be born of that relationship.
Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward, also said it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.
“I’m not a racist,” Bardwell said. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.”
Beth Humphrey, 30, said she and her boyfriend, Terence McKay, 32, both of Hammond, intend to consult the U.S. Justice Department about filing a discrimination complaint.
Humphrey said she called Bardwell Oct. 6 to inquire about getting a marriage license signed. She said Bardwell’s wife told her that Bardwell will not sign marriage licenses for interracial couples.
“I simply can’t believe he can do that. That’s blatant discrimination,” Humphrey said.
The Louisiana American Civil Liberties Union and the Tangipahoa Parish Chapter of the NAACP agree.
Louisiana ACLU Executive Director Marjorie R. Esman said Bardwell’s refusal to sign the license is both “tragic and illegal.”
Pat Morris, NAACP Tangipahoa Parish chapter president, said she was shocked to hear that the choice of a spouse is still an issue in Tangipahoa Parish.
IF THE HEAD of the NAACP in Tangipahoa Parish, La., told the reporter for the Hammond (La.) Daily Star she was shocked by anti-miscegenation justices of the peace, surely she meant it in the same manner that Capt. Renault was "shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on" at Rick's.
If the race-mixing bugaboo still weren't an issue in the Gret Stet, you wouldn't have had politicians trying to trump a "white-woman scandal" last year to torpedo the re-election bid of Baton Rouge's African-American mayor-president.
It didn't work, by the way. But probably because it was just too ridiculous, even by Louisiana standards -- not because there aren't any shortage of people who'd be scandalized.
Again, from the Daily Star article:
Toward the conclusion of her conversation with Bardwell’s wife, Humphrey said she was asked if this was an interracial marriage. Humphrey told her it was.
“I have no idea why she asked me that,” Humphrey said. “I suppose she asks everyone that question.”
Humphrey said the wife told her that Bardwell does not do interracial marriages.
“I don’t understand this because he is an elected official and discrimination is against the law,” Humphrey said.
Bardwell, who is handicapped, said he has been a JP for 34 years and has never had opposition, but this is his last term.
According to the Secretary of State’s elected officials database, his current term will expire Dec. 31, 2014.
Bardwell said from his experience, “99 percent of the time” the interracial couple consists of a black man and white woman.
“I find that rather confusing,” he said.
He said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. Bardwell said he came to the conclusion that most black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society.
“Yet, the children are innocent. They had nothing to do with that,” he said.
In many cases, he said, the grandparents or a relative ends up with the children.
“I don’t do interracial marriages because I don’t want to put children in a situation they didn’t bring on themselves,” Bardwell said. “In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer.”
He said if he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all.
“I try to treat everyone equally,” he said.
MY UNCLE TEDDY lived in Tangipahoa Parish, near Ponchatoula. And when he died -- this was when I was in high school -- I remember going to the wake at a Ponchatoula funeral home.
My old man and some uncles struck up a conversation with the mortician, during which it was determined that it, indeed, was the "white" funeral home in town. The other funeral home was the "colored" one.
This was in the late 1970s. If race-mixing was a problem for the dead then, you can pretty much bet a lot of folks down there still have a problem with it among the living.
Obviously, there's a justice of the peace in that number.
And -- in Louisiana, at least -- "Barack Obama" probably won't get you that far in arguing that being biracial isn't akin to having a dread disease and an extra arm growing out your butt for good measure.
The "University LipDub" phenomenon, it occurs to me, may be the perfect example of the one big thing the Internet has done -- and which traditional media do not "get."
In 1964, Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan famously said "the medium is the message," meaning that the medium by which any message is conveyed changes how the message is perceived or experienced -- that the qualities of the particular medium (whether it be print, film, radio or television) embed themselves into the message itself. Now, what we have discovered -- and what traditional media has not yet -- is that the audience is the media.
Trusts have been busted, monopolies atomized and gatekeepers cast aside. The audience is the media. The Internet is the medium. The message has gotten "off message."
AND A CHILD -- or at least bunches of enthusiastic college students -- shall lead the revolution. The University LipDub project, which started in Germany (see the above video) and is spreading around the teen- and twentysomething globe, is the concept's embodiment.
The product, as seen above and in an earlier post, is as professional as anything done at corporate behest and on a corporate (read: $$$$$$$) scale. And it's a lot more "real."
And . . . it's a lot more infectiously joyous and entertaining, too.
LIPDUB REPRESENTS the existential dilemma for radio, television and newspapers. The conversation is two-way now, and everybody owns a press, a radio transmitter and a TV station.
Traditional media, faced with this new reality, either can join the conversation and add meaningful things to it in a compelling manner . . . or it can go away.
These are not suggestions. It's an either-or choice, and reality will enforce it strictly.
Now, let's enjoy some more LipDub, shall we?
LIKE THIS ONE, for example, from l'Institut des Hautes Etudes des Communications Sociales in Brussels, Belgium:
Reason No. 234,876,129 why I'm Catholic (a grumpy Catholic, but Catholic nevertheless). We pretty much got this kind of nonsense out of our system once Savonarola got his just deserts.
EVEN SO, you have to admit that a bonfire of the Bibles (and everything else) trumps a mere Bonfire of the Vanities every day of the week -- and twice on Sunday.
I'd better stop now, because I feel some Junior Samples jokes coming on. . . .
These videos done with Québecois college kids are so good, they'll make you want to emigrate. Maybe I'll start knocking 30 years of dust off my high-school and college French skills.
Really, I'm not going to be any colder in Montréal than I am this fall south of the border.
