What a day today, eh? Great weather for this time of year, cool but not cold, cloudy, humid. I like it. The day would be utterly perfect if I were, say, sitting on the porch of a nice cabin in the mountains somewhere, sipping piping hot Morning Coffee.
I cannot really enjoy the weather though, as I’m stuck in a windowless building. So why so joyous? I’ll tell you why I’m nearly positively giddy. Led Zeppelin played a live show for the first time in 20 years last night. That is unbelievable. I’ll be the first to admit that I am not a huge, gigantic fan of the iconic band. Perhaps you’ve noticed that everyone loves Zeppelin, but other than baby boomers and musicians, almost no one knows why. Same thing with the Beatles. I appreciate their talent and their music, but have always gravitated away from the “in” thing. Nevertheless, as a fan of music, I am stoked that these guys played last night. It’s like something you never thought would ever happen actually happened. I knew they were going to perform, as it was announced. But the reality didn’t sink in until I read a Hollywood Reporter article reviewing the performance, which by all accounts was fantastic. Obviously, John Bonham, who died in 1980 wasn’t there, but his son joined the remaining original members, who proved they haven’t lost a step in 20 years. It’s amazing that a band goes that long without playing together, then comes back together and plays so well. Plant’s voice has apparently not been degraded by age either.
Hearing Voices = Bad:
Speaking of voices, Matthew Murray, the man who went on a shooting spree at two religious installations in Colorado, had a history of hearing voices. Hearing voices and he performing a couple of “dark rock songs” (Linkin Park/Marilyn Manson) at a work related concert that made other workers “pretty scared” resulted in him getting kicked out of a missionary training program five years ago. A bunkmate of his, Richard Werner, apparently thought he was a strange dude. What I find interesting is that the first thing Werner said to his wife when this happened was, “I know who did it. It’s Matthew…It was so obvious.” Really, Dick? Then why didn’t you maybe try to help five years ago? I hope that this rests on his conscience. People like that annoy me. “The moment it happened, I knew it was Bob. He was just weird, hearing voices and all.” Weird doesn’t mean crazy-murderer, obviously. But generally, when someone exhibits that level of weirdness, hearing voices and the voices telling a person that they like another person (in this case, Matt’s voices telling Matt that they liked Dick so Dick had nothing to worry about), well, that perhaps merits a psych consult, and it is irresponsible that Dick seemingly did nothing. Well, maybe Dick prayed for him. However, there’s not a lot of scientific evidence that prayer heals psychosis; despite God’s abundance of power, he generally neglects to act.
Jeanne Assam was the security guard that shot Matt. She is a former Minneapolis police officer who apparently worked in a pretty bad neighborhood, and had to draw her gun many times. She gives full credit to God in her shooting of Matthew. She says, “It seemed like it was me, the gunman, and God.” It was God that made her strong, and steadied her hand, and helped her confront Matthew, despite him appearing to be twice her size (see yesterday’s MC) and more heavily armed. None of this can be remotely attributed to the years of experience and training as a police officer. I’m being facetious, of course, since it all can be attributed to just that. She did what she was taught to do, and did it admirably. Why not give credit where credit’s due? She also had the presence of mind to beef up security after hearing about the attack on the missionary center, but offers no explanation as to whether or not that was also divinely inspired.
“Huckabeenian” Folly:
Mike Huckabee has been in the news a lot lately, much to his chagrin, I’m sure. That’s what happens when you suddenly become a front runner for your party’s Presidential nomination. Recently, he’s proclaimed that the nation needs to return to Jesus and what not, or the Republic will fall. He’s also taken some heat for all the pardons and commutations of sentences he issued (a lot of them – check out the convicted rapist he freed who subsequently murdered a woman in Missouri) while Arkansas’ governor. He finds homosexuality an “aberrant, unnatural, sinful way of life,” remarks that he still stands by.
While none of the above will garner him my vote, I am impressed by one notion the man has put forth recently, even if he doesn’t realize it and even if he’s been getting the most negative press for it: his refusal to recant his decades old statement about the quarantining HIV patients. My praise is not for his position on HIV patients. I think his idea was stupid, even 20 years ago. We knew that HIV was not passed like TB even then. I’m not even impressed by his sticking to his guns, because he was wrong then. Not the sort of wrong he would have been in 1981, when we knew nothing about the disease. That would have been forgivable; we quarantine TB patients and others for public safety, and we would do so with a disease that we knew nothing about. I am assuming that his policy on AIDS patients was driven to a degree by his religious feelings on homosexuals. His feelings were probably that AIDS was a “gay cancer” and possibly a punishment from God for living in sin (yes, people believed this in the early days of AIDS).
So why am I impressed? I’m impressed with the notion that a man can make a choice or decision 20 years ago, when he was younger and inexperienced, and have that choice be wrong. And maybe the man can even grow from it. I’m not talking expressly about Huckabee. I’m talking in general. It seems today that a Presidential candidate can never have been wrong about anything in his entire life, from the time he was in kindergarten until the present. We have our sights set, mostly for us by others, on the perfect, infallible candidate. One candidate advertises not his own policies, but the mistakes of his adversary a dozen years ago. Generally, the adversary never actually acknowledges that he made a mistake, because having conviction and sticking by his beliefs is somehow seen as better than owning up to something and saying, “You know what, back then I thought it was the right decision, but having the benefit of hindsight, I can see that I mucked it up.” Instead, one must stand by their mistakes as vigorously as their successes. I know, I know, if someone were to say that, the unwashed masses would think that he might mess something up while in the White House, because we know that anyone who can attain that high office is nearly perfect in their decision making.
Huckabee handled this situation better than most…sort of. He sort of got it right when he said “we didn’t know back then” and “I would not have made that decision in 2007 with the information we now have available.” But he still mucked it up by giving us a load of crap about not knowing then, because we all did.
We need to abandon our unrealistic expectations of our Presidential candidates, because they will all let us down. See George Bush for example. I’m not let down, because I expected some sort of nonsense when he was elected (and I voted for him). We also need to be okay with people having made mistakes (to an extent – massacring people is not a forgivable mistake, for example). I see someone who’s made mistakes and has been forced to learn from them as a better candidate than someone who’s allegedly never made one. Assuming that they really didn’t, how do we know how they’d respond to such high responsibility? Have they grown into the job at all? No one is born with the skills necessary to be our President. And we should, in my worthless opinion, be skeptical of anyone claiming, even obliquely, infallibility.
I want to make it vitally clear, which is sad, that I am not condoning Huckabee’s ill-advised statements on AIDS patients. I am using his round-about admission of being wrong as an example to illustrate a point that it seems that no one can ever admit to being wrong.
Word of the Day: Artifice (noun): 1. Cleverness or skill; ingenuity; inventiveness. 2. An ingenious or artful device or expedient. 3. An artful trick or stratagem. 4. Trickery; craftiness; insincere or deceptive behavior. A politician’s dream word.
On This Day in History: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States (1941). Also, the Roman festival in honor of Sol Indiges, a sun deity. Later in the Empire, today Romans would have also celebrated Septimontium, which was a festival for the Seven Hills of Rome. This festival was supposed to be held in September, but as time went on, the Roman calendar became somewhat inaccurate.
“Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition, there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.” – George Soros.
“The man who says "I may be wrong, but--" does not believe there can be any such possibility.” – Frank “Kin” Hubbard.
Today’s Morning Coffee is like man: imperfect; flawed.
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