Doggone it!

A few years back, my father shot an apparently vicious dog, which was attacking another dog. (He's dead now, if it makes you PETA-freaks feel better. My dad's dead.) I often think about this one incident and what it says about him and myself. But ultimately, this leads to an unavoidable conclusion: It was just a dog. In some parts of the world, dogs are food. My father, for all his flaws, never shot a person or a primate or a dolphin--any creature higher than a dog. Dogs, despite their apparent intelligence, are not particularly high on the evolutionary scale. Beating them is not the same as assaulting a human; it just makes you a world-class douche.

Sarah Palin recently tweeted a pic of her mentally challenged son, Trig, using a dog as a stepladder. It is not so much disturbing that a mentally challenged kid accidentally caused a dog discomfort so much as that his mother transmitted the photo as a source of pride. Sarah Palin--a former governor and current Fox News correspondent--is supposed to be really smart.

It is not evil to kill an animal for food or cloths, but it still doesn't deserve to be turned into a floorcovering to demonstrate how little taste that your family has. Trophy hunting is sickening. Such a gaudy display of slaughter makes a mockery of God wanting humanity to practice responsible stewardship of the environment. The grizzly is one of the most potent land creatures that has ever lived. God did not make grizzlies so the Palin kids can have sex on it. (Drill, baby, drill!) Further, Palin's past reference to herself as a "mama grizzly" makes no sense, seeing how she proudly kills grizzlies.

Palin is, in one regard, a woman from a different time. A Republican such as Theodore Roosevelt supported conservation not because there was a natural order to the world and that humanity had no right to eradicate a species, but so future generations would have something to kill. Hunting has long been a sport of the ruling class, having their other needs met, there's nothing left but to pretend to rough it. I don't have a blanket opposition to hunting; the steak that I had at Sizzler last week wasn't a product of cow suicide.... Hope it was cow.

Palin, meanwhile, has defended herself with her proxy defense: Lamestream media hypocrisy. She pointed out that talk show host and liberal darling Ellen DeGeneres recently posted a pic of her using a dog as a footstool--from 40 years ago. (The dog is long dead, and I presume the animal lover DeGeneres didn't kill it.)

I must rack my mind over the differences, and here's the one that I can come up with: Americans like Ellen; we hate Palin. Ellen does not compartmentize people--when she looks out at a crowd of Americans, she sees Americans. When Palin sees a crowd, she immediately divides people based on them being "real Americans" and non-conservatives such as members of the liberal media elite, who ruined her political ambitions by asking her such "gotcha" questions as: Which newspapers do you read? Ellen supports rejecting the meanness of society; Palin basks in it--except for when such cruelty and moral judgments are directed against her own family. Sarah Palin wallows in human prejudices like a pig of intolerance. I am not a lesbian and I certainly am not a liberal, so I can safely say: You're a bitch, Sarah Palin. Jesus--who is obligated to love everyone--must be deeply conflicted about you, Sarah Palin.

Most of all, the photo confirms what so many of us knew about Sarah Palin: She hates animals. She shoots wolves (which are closely related to dogs) from a helicopter. She loves nature so much as she can profit off it, and she hates God's creatures. The same could be said about Marion Barry's crack use and Bill Clinton's numerous sex scandals, and anything George W. Bush ever said or says or will say in the future. Palin is thus right in claiming that the media are picking on her--she has just refused to alter her behavior to become a more decent human being.

#TheDress #DaFuck

I saw this weird tweet and reference across the Internet when it happened. ISIS is beheading groups of people, and we need to stop everything to talk about this. It's a white and gold dress.

I think anyone who sees the dress for what it is is a damn liar. It's like when people find out how a magic trick is performed beforehand, then acts like it's plainly obvious how the magic trick is performed. (I'm looking at you, Justin Bieber.) In this picture, the dress is clearly white and gold. Perhaps in real life, this dress is blue and black--in the image, it is white and gold. The more you stare at it, you see shades of blue, yeah--like it's a white dress with a blue light on it.

There is a great scientific reason for why this dress can appear to be two radically different color schemes, but damnit, I don't understand it--and it's a white and gold dress! Get out of here, nerds!

Oh, but wouldn't it be great if this dress causes another civil war in America? All over a white and gold dress.

Both terrorists and artists tend to be assholes. (Je suis...I got a D in French.)

Bill Maher declared this was an Islamic terrorist attack in the hours afterward, before the corpses were cold and the suspects were named. A few years back, a tasteful depiction of Muhammed was censored on an episode of South Park, with the overarching theme being a satirical jab at artists for kowtowing to the Islamic extremists who are literally the only people who demand that Muhammed is never shown. (Christians, meanwhile, have a complicated issue as to whether Jesus/God could or should be depicted in graphic form.) A few years prior to this, Muhammed was depicted on the Comedy Central show as a superhero in the legion of religious figures turned superheroes. No one noticed.

Really being offended at a depiction of Muhammed is not the strangest thing that Islamic terrorist do, is it? They sincerely believe that THEY are being attacked and are merely resisting. They believe that killing women and children will make Muslims look better the world over. The people whom Muslim religious fanatics are most liable to kill are Muslims, followed by non-Muslim aid workers and journalists. They are so divorced from reality that they make American Christian fanatics seem downright sane.

This terrorist attack has had the unintended side effect of rightwingers declaring a moratorium on Franco-phobic jokes. (How badass was that raid, by the way? They shot the terrorists. Good for them! I have a mental image of them afterwards shooting their automatic guns into the air, yelling: "U-S-A!") Real politics involve the notion that the "enemy of the enemy is my friend"--and the French, who are normally terrible, are now confronted with the threat of Islamic extremism. This existential threat to human civilization is worse than liking Jerry Lewis, who was never that good.... Muslim terrorists: worse.

Occasionally funny short person Bill Maher is not so much concerned about life but about bashing religion--any religion, I believe. Rightwing Christians are agreeing with him because he is agreeing with them: Islam is not a religion of peace. Politics make strange bedfellows. Of course, the modern state of Islam is an excellent promotional material for atheism. Islamic society at one time led the world in civility--including women's rights. For whatever reason, Muslims the world over had grown stupider across the centuries. Christians suffered their dark ages, and now these are theirs--unfortunately, the rise of Western thought has coincided with the decline of Islamic thought. Most of the world's Muslims are illiterate; they cannot read the Koran. And when non-Muslims tell Muslims what are in their religious scriptures, it is understandably greeting with suspicions. And, face it: It's not our book. They are literally just making up Islam as they go along. Meanwhile most Western Muslims are literate, and the educated Muslims are most often the ones to stage Islamic terrorist attacks. This should make us give pause--but it won't.

As a fellow artist, I have to say: I'll write whatever I damn well please. As an intelligent person, I have to say: No, I won't be drawing a picture of Muhammed. Because, in the words of Stan from South Park when asked if he thought the elderly should be allowed to drive: No, I don't hate the elderly; I just don't want to die. I think a lot of artists feel the same, criticizing a backwards religious ideology from the safety of the crowds. There is now a rush to depict the prophet Muhammed MORE after this terrorist attack. Saying "fuck you" to random people is a hallmark of democracy. However, attempting to make a stand on principle even if this principle is not worth standing for makes you a douche--you're drawing Muhammed to make the Islamic extremists livid, not because you have anything intelligent to say about the prophet Muhammed. So do as you will, artists, but I will not think you brilliant or brave.

There's an unfortunate racial angle to this, too: Europe has an immigration problem. The Mexicans aren't performing suicide attacks to appease the Virgin of Guadlupe. (Don't start, Mexicans. Wouldn't be cool.) Europe is situated near North Africa and the Middle East. They have generous welfare programs, and enough technological development and freedom of expression to allow people to do whatever they want. It's like the French have created a perfect environment to start mass murder. What has previously stopped them was a lack of guns--and, I suspect, butter-rich diets. It's hard to murder when you're full of butter. You just feel good and the saturated fat slows you down. Europe will now have to clamp down on immigration, which might further alienate the Muslims already there, which will be a problem to be sorted out at some later day.

Americans should be thankful that terrorists have never learned that they could just buy a bunch of guns and begin killing Americans--there is no need to construct bombs or poison the air. In real life, a good gun will not protect you from a bad guy with a gun who shoots you in the back. (He's a bad guy; that's what bad guys do.) It is an egregious error to believe that your enemies are as noble as yourself.

Muslims in developed countries, meanwhile are so often complete hypocrites. They hang out at Western universities. They receive social benefits--such as unemployment, transportation and free primary schooling--they get laid and drunk. Then they decide that the West is evil and no other Muslim should benefit from the advantages that they have received. Many of these homegrown terrorists are converts to Islam. They do not wish to practice the religion--whether Islam or atheism--so much as are seeking a pretense to be obnoxious (which is something Maher should consider) to non-believers. We should welcome Muslims in our society. Their religion is no more stupid or violent than any other religion.

When addressing the notion that Islam--an old religion of over a billion adherents--is a death cult, I am reminded of an (okay) unrealistic scene in The Dark Knight, where the Joker has rigged two ferries full of people--one with convicts, the other with civilians--with explosives and gives them a countdown to kill each other, to prove that humanity is fundamentally bad. The minutes tick by, and nothing happens. As the debate rages on, the ferry captain of the good boat realizes: "We're still here." That brings me comfort.

But Maher is still an asshole, right? He's an asshole.

Officer cameras could be defeated by a sticker.

Last year at the Metro/7th subway stop (for non-Angelenos, that's a hub that connects several rail lines, including the hellish passage into Compton), I saw two sheriff deputies--white or Latino, a male and a female--deputies conversing with a mentally ill black man, who was quit animate about some point. (It is safe to say that they were arguing about fare non-payment.) The fellow raised his hands high above his head, and that was the cue for the male cop to tackle him. The two went to the floor, and the female deputy joined in and arrested him. To my knowledge, no one died during that arrest. And though someone could've been killed, the deputy made the judgment call that he needed to end this confrontation. From my distance, it looked like police brutality.

The cops in the Eric Garner case were attempting to grab Garner by the wrists, but he waved them off. (Garner, who was 6-3 and over 350 pounds, had a history of resisting arrest.) It is a myth that Garner wasn't trying to resist arrest at the time of his death--though no loose cigarettes were found on him--he was clearly arguing with the cops on scene. He clearly didn't want to be arrested or touched. (I don't like being touched either, by the way. However, I can also recognize that the cops are allowed to touch me in a non-sexual manner in order to aid their investigation.) In Officer Pantaleo's brilliance, he thought to use a chokehold on the much larger adversary. It was a dick move, and it was against NYPD policy. In hindsight, the cops should've tried harder to negotiate a favorable outcome. There will be a million dollar settlement going to Garner's family. But none of that changes the fact that it wasn't a murder.

Let's get the terminology correct. "Homicide" means an unnatural death, not murder. Jeffrey Dahmer strangled over ten black men to death--he murdered black men, and he often used strangulation. Dahmer was not a cop trying to arrest anyone. He had the motive of needing to assert control and an incredibly bizarre fascination with death, leading to one of the most bizarre true-life American horror stories of the 20th century.

I am concerned with how sarcastic the "hands up" movement is. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BLACK MEN, DO NOT COME AT POLICE WITH YOUR HANDS RAISED!!! (There.) When the cops want you to come over, they will ask you to come over. You can yell and curse at cops all you want from the comfort and anonymity of the crowd. When the cops are talking to you, check your attitude. NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS. Any number of these shooting incidents have been caused by racism, yes, but also by black men oblivious to how they are perceived by others. YOU KNOW that you're a nice guy, but the cops don't know this.

There is an unfortunate anti-authoritarian attitude among so many American blacks that leads to self-destruction. American doctors so often just don't want to be subjected to the argument or accusation that they are attempting to enforce an Anglo-centric standard of beauty onto blacks. (I'm not making this up: Doctors refuse to tell black people to lose weight.) "Fat" is certainly a relative term, to be clear; there is a stigma among African American girls of being "boney." Mo'Nique has built an entire persona around criticizing "skinny bitches." Meanwhile, diabetes is striking down blacks and numerous blacks seem confused as to the cause. Libertarians tell us that blacks should be allowed to eat whatever they want--and the government shouldn't pay for poor blacks' healthcare. Thank God for Michelle Obama, in all seriousness. Can you imagine the accusations of racism if Laura Bush had told black women that they were too damn fat?

The use of video footage "proves" that it was a murder. We are overly reliant on video footage and not logic--if the cop wanted to kill Garner, he would've shot him. If you're planning to brutalize a suspect, you wouldn't do it while a camera is rolling. You would turn the camera off. (Advocates of officer-mounted cameras tend to ignore that the cops will be able to cover up the lens with a sticker. Or experience "battery failure" or "forget" to wear it--I can go on.) You wouldn't do it on a public street, in broad daylight. The image of this arrest is haunting, certainly. However, if he hadn't died, this never would've made the news. What makes the video haunting is that he did actually die after proclaiming that he was about to die.

Garner should've yelled: "I'm experiencing shortness of breathe." Rather he yelled: "I can't breath." Garner was not an educated man, and he used more common vernacular to describe his current health state. The cops, lacking much medical knowledge ("shortness of breath" being a red flag for a health crisis) and well-attuned in the art of BS, assumed he was faking it. They weren't really strangling him. They weren't really roughing him up--no healthy man should've been injured during the course of THAT arrest. Numerous rightwingers, bizarrely, are still using this as proof that he was faking it: If you cannot breath, how can you say that you cannot breath? Science!

This death brings to mind the late LAPD Chief Daryl Gates, who proclaimed in the early '90s that so many black men were being killed during chokeholds not that his people were using too much force but that "black people didn't respond to chokeholds like normal people." This statement has two potential meanings: Black men are so belligerent that they end up being accidentally killed or that black men are biologically unable to withstand a few seconds of strangulation. In either case, Gates was throwing out a nonsensical and fairly racist justification for his people's actions. You can be right and completely tone-deaf to the person whom you're explaining your logical conclusions to, and Gates's political idiocy led to the LA Riots. The use of chokeholds was abandoned for nightsticks...which led to the beating of a suspect named Rodney King, which led to the Riots. Thus both a controversial police tactic and the attempt to rectify a controversial police tactic led to the Riots.

According to the coroner: Contributing factors to Garner's death included bronchial asthma, heart disease, obesity, and hypertensive cardiovascular disease. Garner was not going to live a long life. He didn't follow doctor's orders--or he was never given doctor's orders. He also didn't listen to the cops, having been arrested multiple times--including for resisting arrest. His death was not entirely caused by his bad decisions, both legal and medical. He suffered an attack from overzealous law enforcement officers.

Still not murder.

#Ferguson Redux

If Bill Cosby were in Ferguson, the first thing he would do is rape someone.... Then the second thing he would do is criticize blacks.

I was a young child during the LA Riots back in '92, and though I didn't participate in those riots, I can tell these present riots are for rank amateurs. Like the rioters out here, they're not demonstrating outrage so much as damaging other people's property. The rioters aren't violent enough to be revolutionaries and are not peaceful enough to be protestors. They are posers--pseudo-revolutionaries--and most hate the cops more than they have been victimized by the police. They hide amongst the legitimate protestors, so really, I would just stay home. The rioters are ruining the legitimate points that you might be making about racial profiling and police brutality. And here's what's going to happen: Business people will not want to build in Ferguson--not for a decade--and the land will become blighted. And this wouldn't be the cops' fault. Because one black guy was killed in self-defense, this place is going to get worse, not better. There is no dialogue--and any dialogue that might occur would lead to shouting and mutual recriminations. Cops come and go, but these riots will last long in Missourians' (Missourites'?) minds. Long after Wilson is dead, the history books will speak of those assholes who burned down a piece of Missouri.

Of course, this really isn't about the one black guy. The media--especially the rightwing media--are attempting to condense this into a Mike Brown/Ferguson PD issue. We are supposedly recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression--a recovery that has largely benefited the wealthy/middle-class more than the poor. In 2014, some people still cannot believe a brown guy named "Hussein" could have been born in America. Voter ID laws (that prevent blacks from voting) are good but gun control laws (that might protect blacks' right to stay alive) are evil. Screwdrivers and hoodies are burglar tools. Don't film cops because they're shy.

These systemic issues do not change certain problems with the DA's case: Scanning the grand jury transcript, the pro-Brown witnesses did not understand that their recollections were wrong. They didn't see lies as lies, and they repeated what they thought members of THEIR community wanted to hear: Brown had his hands up, and he wasn't fighting back. Some of the prosecution's witnesses didn't see what happened but were repeating hearsay. And the forensic evidence supported the defense. The video of Brown assaulting another man supported the defense. A grand jury could indict a ham sandwich, and thus the case for self-defense was so strong that Wilson does not have the culpability of a ham sandwich. (What does need to be explained was the apparent shift in the police's story that Brown was stopped for the violent robbery that he'd just committed, not walking in the street.)

Meanwhile Wilson does himself no favors by speaking. His conscious is clear, which are HIS exact words. (He said this--Google it!) Really? No regrets? I know almost nothing about Darren Wilson, but I can think up at least one thing that he did wrong in his life. I can think up one thing he did wrong. When you kill someone, you should show remorse for your actions--even if it was just in self-defense, not murder. Nope. He has no regrets. I like Darren Wilson a whole lot less now. He was once a good cop, but he'll never be a cop again.

The protestors are legitimate in putting forth the issue of police corruption. I have the creeping suspicion that whites would care a lot more about what's happening in Ferguson if a Chipolte were burning. The immaturity of the rioters has been used as an example of the animalistic behavior of blacks. Plus they probably voted for Obama, including the ones under 19.

The thug Mayor Rudy Giuliani exemplifies the problems with so many of the rioters' critics by pointing out this: Well, black people are always killing each other too--so why not agents of the government? He is a LAWYER! He should know that's not how the law works, damnit! Just because black guys are shooting each other doesn't give cops permission to shoot them too--y'know, get in on the action. Soon all Americans will run out of black guys to shoot. Then white people will have to start importing them--from somewhere.

Giuliani's points are based on the neo-racist notion that most black people agree with conservatives and that racism no longer exists. In antebellum America, slaveholders believed that blacks revolted not because they were legitimately outraged but because outside agitators (white liberals) were turning them against their benevolent masters. The police are totally honest and not racist at all. The "race hustlers" ( re Al Sharpton--always with Sharpton) and the media are tricking black people into believing the status quo is racist. Now there are rumblings that Brown's stepfather should be prosecuted for "inciting" these riots. (In his anger that the government just killed his son, he expressed support for tearing down the government.) Shockingly, in this story, only the black guy might end up being sent to prison.

Ferguson PD, demonstrating how big their balls are, have demanded the NFL should apologize to them for inflaming racial tensions after several Rams performed the "hands up" protest gesture. (Oh, and to the people of American, putting your hands up is a good call when confronted by the police--this movement is more sarcastic than I would like to see.) Of all the evils of the NFL, they are not causing riots. They are in the unenviable positions of having to choose between showing support for law enforcement and abiding by the cops' sheer stupidity.

Rudy Giuliani, however, is a certified asshole. Unlike Mitt Romney, it feels like Giuliani is an asshole to his own family, which makes him a very special asshole. He should go back to New York and try to exploit 9/11 some more.

Bill Cosby: Scooby-deebee-do, I'm going to rape you!

Called it.

Called it.

Called it on iTunes.

Lena Dunham: Not a pedophile!

There are so many reasons to hate Lena Dunham. She is a hipster-poser whose parents never pointed out that she wasn't special as they sent her to a liberal arts college. She's like the JD Salinger of girls who've had a boyfriend. She's the Woody Allen minus the life experience. She's not as stupid as a Kardashian-Jenner, but she's not as attractive as one. However, recently people have been claiming that Dunham is also a pedophile because of some questionable passages in her latest book concerning her own sexual exploration, which I will not name, because I don't want to promote her.

There are a serious of problems with their allegations. For starters, pre-sexual people cannot be sex offenders, since being an offender requires knowledge of the inappropriateness of their behavior and a desire to receive sexual gratification from their conduct with youths or unwilling partners. Dunham's critics are contorting reality in claiming that she is currently or was ever a part of such perversion. Dunham's actual perversion is reason enough to criticize her.

Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Jerry Seinfeld, Wilmder Valderrama, Mila Kunis (probably), Karl Malone, Ted Nugent, Justin Timberlake, Steven Tyler, that Asian guy who's dating Lorde--all these people received sexual stimulation from people under the age of 18, and thus are better examples of pedophiles. Taylor Swift was 19 when she dated 17-year-old Taylor Lautner, but I'm not sure what encompassed dating the teenage Swift. Maybe a lot of handholding and unicorn drawing as she gathered material for her next album on everything you're doing wrong.

[There is a double-standard in May-December relationships that favor women. (South Park addressed this excellently. Nice.) This can be seen in cases where a teacher--almost always a woman--has a sexual relationship with a teen. And some of these teachers were hot. I mean, unusually hot. Lena Dunham is not hot. She does not look good naked. (Take. A. Clue.) However, this does not entail incest.]

In talking about her masturbating habits, she is relating how ludicrous her sleeping arrangement was at this time, and I'm wondering what her parents were thinking in forcing kids to share beds when there was presumably no financial need to. She was not testifying that she enjoyed touching herself near her sister--she was saying the exact opposite. She was using an analogy, not making a confession. It is an analogy that any man with a lick of common sense would never use, but Dunham is neither a man nor does she have a lick of common sense. Dunham is a needy runt (switch out a letter), and her behavior towards her sister was not molestation but a manifestation of that. What we should take of this is Lena Dunham lacks self-awareness.

Dunham does herself no favor by blaming rightwingers or men for taking her comments out of context. This was a ploy of rally their troops before the midterm. This is "slut shaming," as she would claim. I disagree. No, no one cares about what Lena Dunham thinks, politically, so there is no reason to attack her. You're Taylor Swift but you have a TV show and you're not pretty, Lena Dunham. You're also not Hillary Clinton, who witnessed real oppression of women in the real world, not Manhattan or Hollywood.

A normal woman would not have written about such things. Dunham is of the generation that believes that even the most humiliating things should be written about and thus recorded for posterity. These things are things that you're supposed to take to your grave--same as Michelle Phillips's acknowledgement that she once had a sexual relationship with her father. But Dunham has nothing else to write about.