Je Suis Charlie: Paris Attack on Charlie Hebdo Offices

I think that one of the keystones of modern civilization is the ability to say, believe or write things which others find offensive without being killed for your expression of thoughts. I don't think that anyone who believes in freedom of speech can hold otherwise. And even people who aren't necessarily the biggest fans of free speech still usually aren't big fans of murder. So all right minded people deplored the Paris acts of murder directed against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. At least two armed French-Algerian men, presumably angered by satirical and scatological cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, stormed the magazine offices, killing twelve people and wounding eleven others. At this time the men are still at large. They are believed to be the brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi. 

On Wednesday, eight journalists - including the magazine's editor - died along with a caretaker and a visitor when masked men armed with assault rifles stormed the Charlie Hebdo offices during an editorial meeting. Eleven people were also wounded, some seriously. Two policemen were also killed.

Witnesses say the gunmen shouted "we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" and "we killed Charlie Hebdo", as well as "God is Great" in Arabic. The attackers fled to northern Paris before abandoning their car and hijacking a Renault Clio, police say. The magazine's office was firebombed in 2011. It had angered some Muslims by printing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as part of its irreverent take on news and current affairs.

These murders and attempted murders were immediately condemned by the overwhelming majority of Muslim leaders, religious and otherwise, in France and beyond. Nevertheless, the murders of French cartoonists for blasphemy feeds into the idea of a clash of civilizations, much beloved by extremists in all of the Abrahamic faiths. In this Manichean understanding, certain religions are simply incompatible. We must eliminate or suppress them. We can not possibly live with them. They are evil. Obviously "we" and "them" and "they" depends on who is speaking or writing. Strangely enough the people rushing to condemn all Muslims for the depraved acts of a few don't think that others should condemn all whites or all cops or all Christians for similar acts in the past  or the present. A Muslim acting badly reflects on all Muslims but a Christian acting badly is one individual. Right. Doesn't that seem a little, well, wrong?

In this country I am more worried about home grown indigenous right wing terror or a trigger happy cop than I am about some immigrant religious nutter or first generation resident. Given the size of the faith communities on the planet, it is a pipe dream to imagine that a faith you don't like could ever be eliminated but fundamentalists of any stripe tend not to deal in practicalities. No, what these murders could do is to increase the growing sentiment among some Europeans that there are too many Muslim immigrants and citizens already resident in Europe. Some people may start to wonder where is Charles Martel when you really need him.

Overnight, seven people believed to be connected to the Kouachi brothers were detained in the towns of Reims and Charleville-Mezieres, as well as in the Paris area. Cherif Kouachi was sentenced in 2008 to three years in prison for belonging to a Paris-based group sending jihadist fighters to Iraq. Following the shootings at the magazine, there appear to have been a number of revenge attacks on Muslims reported by French media, though nobody was hurt:

• Two shots were fired at a Muslim prayer room in the town of Port-la-Nouvelle in the southern region of Aude on Wednesday evening
• A Muslim family was shot at in their car in Caromb, in the southern region of Vaucluse
• Dummy grenades were thrown during the night at a mosque in Le Mans, western France
• The slogan "Death to Arabs" was daubed on the door of a mosque in Poitiers, central France, during the night
• A blast hit a kebab shop beside a mosque in Villefranche-sur-Saone in central France

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European countries have traditionally been ethnic homelands and not settler states or targets for immigration The murders may increase the stigma around Islam. It is also important to make it clear that "free speech" in the abstract includes a lot of things that I do not like and that I think that most decent people would not like. Some which Charlie Hebdo published were roughly about the same quality and tone of work that Hustler owner Larry Flynt might have featured. Some cartoons were deliberately offensive. Worse, some of them just did not amuse. But I don't have to agree with them or find them funny to be upset that other people murdered the cartoonists. I feel very strongly about freedom of speech, the right to dissent, the right to have your own beliefs. If I want to reject your religious views that's my right. If I find them silly and harmful and decide to spend my time making fun of them that's also my right. Your moral choices when faced with that situation are to counterattack with your own speech, ignore me, or perhaps try to get me fired from my job. It's not a moral choice to beat me into submission or kill me. Not in the US or most Western countries anyway. Other countries have different ideas about mocking religion.

All that said we should remember that in many aspects the US has greater freedom of speech than France. In the US, you can deny the Holocaust or make fun of it. If you're funny enough you can build a career out of telling racist jokes. You can suggest that Black people were better off under slavery and/or are less intelligent than everyone else. You can write books earnestly explaining how white people are genetic Ice Age mutations predisposed to violence or how your particular ethnic group just happens to be smarter than everyone else. In France such things can get you banned, fined or arrested. So it's not that France is some free speech paradise. It's not. If I were a French Muslim religious extremist I might well be peacefully agitating for my religious sensitivities to get the same free speech carve out as other people's ethnic or racial sensitivities. 

But the bottom line is that if your understanding of your religion requires you to kill people who make fun of it, then a modern secular society with separation of church and state is simply not for you. You should depart such a place at once and resettle in a country which features ruthlessly enforced blasphemy laws. You would be much happier and so would I. It's a win-win situation. Quite simple really. #JeSuisCharlie

What are your thoughts? 

NYC Subway "Manspreading" Double Standards

Big Sister Is Watching You

I am often glad that I live in a region where public transportation is all but considered an environmentalist plot to deprive every true blue red blooded American of his right to drive a vehicle of his choosing anywhere he wants to all by himself if he so desires. Okay that is obviously an exaggeration but not by all that much. People like their cars and trucks around here. What public transportation exists in southeast Michigan is modest and often doesn't go beyond municipal boundaries. Although downtown population densities are slightly increasing, suburban sprawl remains king. Even people who live and work within the same city usually drive to work instead of taking the bus. There isn't really any train or subway system. Outside of married people working at the same firm, carpooling isn't all that common. Single driver usage rules. This means of course that each driver is king or queen of their own vehicle and all that resides within it. They can listen to music as loudly as they wish, recline their seat as far back as they want, use the passenger's seat as a combination office desk/restaurant table and sit in their seat however they damn well please. This last consideration is under some attack in New York City. Apparently there are some women people who have decided that how some other men people sit on the subway is not only rude, gross and downright nasty but that it's also sexist, unchivalrous, in need of public shaming and likely eventual ticketing by police. Yes I am talking about that apparent scourge of New York City public transportation, men sitting with their legs wider apart than some women care to experience. The horror!!! The horror!!!  



It is the bane of many female subway riders. It is a scourge tracked on blogs and on Twitter. And it has a name almost as distasteful as the practice itself. It is manspreading, the lay-it-all-out sitting style that more than a few men see as their inalienable underground right. Now passengers who consider such inelegant male posture as infringing on their sensibilities — not to mention their share of subway space — have a new ally: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Taking on manspreading for the first time, the authority is set to unveil public service ads that encourage men to share a little less of themselves in the city’s ever-crowded subways cars. The targets of the campaign, those men who spread their legs wide, into a sort of V-shaped slouch, effectively occupying two, sometimes even three, seats are not hard to find. Whether they will heed the new ads is another question. Riding the F train from Brooklyn to Manhattan on a recent afternoon, Fabio Panceiro, 20, was unapologetic about sitting with his legs spread apart. “I’m not going to cross my legs like ladies do,” he said. “I’m going to sit how I want to sit.” And what if Mr. Panceiro, an administrative assistant from Los Angeles, saw posters on the train asking him to close his legs? “I’d just laugh at the ad and hope that someone graffitis over it,” he said.

For Kelley Rae O’Donnell, an actress who confronts manspreaders and tweets photos of them, her solitary shaming campaign now has the high-powered help of the transportation authority, whose ads will be plastered inside subway cars. “It drives me crazy,” she said of men who spread their legs. “I find myself glaring at them because it just seems so inconsiderate in this really crowded city.” When Ms. O’Donnell, who lives in Brooklyn and is in her 30s, asks men to move, she said, they rarely seem chastened: “I usually get grumbling or a complete refusal.”
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Football Players Oppressing Women

I can't believe, well actually I can believe it so that wouldn't have been an accurate statement. I will say that I am more amused than annoyed by the extent to which some people, in this case feminists, will go to extremes to find something to be irritated about which just happens to be primarily done by the opposite gender. Honestly I think that if we were truthful with each other each gender could probably come up with what they think of as excellent reasons that or circumstances in which the opposite gender should be more like their own. I know I could. Generally though, those sorts of discussions are mostly held in single gender forums. Most people don't take them all that seriously. They are just ways to blow off steam. Most people left behind the "Oooh (boys/girls) are icky" stage of life when they were around twelve years old. The so-called "War of The Sexes" will never be lost or won because there's always too much fraternization with the enemy as Kissinger pointed out. Some differences are made to be enjoyed and sought after; others perhaps can be amusingly tolerated. But in any event certain differences are real. They aren't going anywhere. So people should just learn to deal with them. In the big picture I don't think the differences are that important. Making a brouhaha out of how men sit is from where I stand just incredibly narcissistic and entitled. It's also dare I say, more than a little bossy. It shouldn't need to be said but evidently some people need to understand that men by definition have different anatomy than women and are also generally larger than women. Men sitting a certain way doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being sexist or aggressive against women or anything like that. Most of them just need the room. If trying to bully men into sitting like women is the most important issue in New York City, then I congratulate New York City for having solved such issues as housing segregation, police brutality, gentrification, rising income inequality, bad schools and other evils that the rest of the the country is still battling.

The King of The North Is Inconsiderate

We talked about the decline of chivalry before. Although I was raised to be chivalrous the world has definitely changed since my youth during the Pleistocene Epoch. There are not as many women today as there were then who appreciate chivalry. But putting that aside I fail to see how sitting like a man is by definition unchivalrous. It sounds to me like some of the women complaining have less of a problem with ungracious men than they do with men period. That's a personal issue. I don't think it should be of concern to the state. Silliness aside this campaign really sounds like something that would take place in a nation like Singapore where individual rights and choices are considered far less important than rigidly enforced cultural conformity. If I were sitting on a bus or train and some woman wanted to sit next to me I would be polite and try to give her as much room as I could. Within limits. But if she starts to photograph me and harangue me about how I am sitting or how my supposed "male entitlement" offends her delicate sensibilities well she will get an entirely different response. Now just imagine if yours truly walked up to a young woman and explained that I was grossly offended because her skirt was too short or her purse was too large and taking up too much space or that she was too fat and blocking other people from using adjacent seats. I'm betting that wouldn't end well. It certainly wouldn't get a twitter campaign, a public transportation PR initiative or a supportive NYT article. It's funny to me that some women will try to deflate any criticism of their actions by calling it shaming but in this instance are trying to explicitly shame men for being men. Like I wrote above, I'm glad that I live where I do and avoid public transportation. The only busybodies I have to deal with are in the workplace. To be fair there are almost as many people in NYC as there are in the entirety of Michigan so perhaps I don't fully grok the concerns around space. Either way I thought this story was funny as can be.

What are your thoughts?

Things Not To Say To Black People

Sometimes when people complain about 'political correctness" they are really complaining about not being able to openly insult certain people any more without worrying about the insulted person's feelings let alone losing their job. These are the people who get personally offended that at work they can't openly call a black person a n****** when they've already given most people the impression they use the slur pretty routinely with friends and family. So I don't pay a whole lot of attention to some complaints around political correctness. But there are other folks who haven't grown up around different people. As adults they do not routinely work with different people or have any of them within their circle of intimates (neighbors, spouses, in-laws, lovers, close friends, etc). And since they're in the majority they don't really need to know what a minority may consider offensive. So though some people may not mean harm by their statement or question, insult can still be taken. We all have difficulty seeing through other people's perceptions. It's not always easy to determine if someone is saying something from honest well meaning, if clueless curiosity, or instead is expressing racist malice. Often times black people try to discern the difference and decide if the situation is worth verbally chin-checking someone. I generally feel that it is worth the hassle to set someone straight. My experiences have been that when you give some people an inch they take a mile. I have usually regretted it when I've let stuff slide. However there is no right answer to this because we are all different with dissimilar tolerances for what we consider offensive, racist, or just off-color (pun intended). 

Settling conflicts with a co-worker is different from getting into it with your boss or other ranking leaders. Keeping your job or a viable career path could mean keeping your mouth shut. There are some common comments or actions which many black people have heard or experienced. Most of these things are generally considered offensive to a lesser or greater extent. I ran across this video while looking for something else and thought it humorous enough to share. I have experienced some of these comments (and more) at workplaces. Stereotypes stink.

Movie Reviews: Let's Kill Ward's Wife

Let's Kill Ward's Wife
directed by Scott Foley

This is a black comedy which is most definitely not for everyone. If you can find murder humorous, if you can think of a few people you wouldn't mind removing from the planet, if you have ever gotten away with something and kept it moving, you might find the premise of this movie to be tolerable. If on the other hand none of those things apply then this film isn't for you. I wasn't that bothered by the film's premise : an unpleasant, aggressive, bullying, harridan causes her husband's friends to consider removing her from the planet. A Fish Called Wanda treated murder comically and did so with great verve. But Let's Kill Ward's Wife is not A Fish Called Wanda in either writing or execution. Although the title is if anything flame bait for people who are worried by "misogynist" or "anti-feminist" overtones, the film attempts to inoculate itself against this charge by having various women be in on what turns into a murder conspiracy. I'm not sure this would have made a difference. It might have been more of a twist if the men had carried out the murder and tried to hide it from their wives or girlfriends at first. Dunno.  
Anyway. My major problem with Let's Kill Ward's Wife was that the film never gives the viewer any reason why Ward (Donald Faison from Scrubs) would have married this woman in the first place, let alone put up with her or have had a child with her. His wife is not only verbally abusive, insulting, and nasty to Ward in private she's also that way in public. She will rip Ward a new one in front of company. She has no problem doing that. 

His wife is at best average looking. She provides Ward no physical comfort. I don't just mean the obvious. I mean no hugs, no kisses, no nothing. It's the opposite as the viewer is led to believe that she would have no problem giving the passive Ward a backhand across the face. So from a male point of view why would you marry a plain looking nasty hostile woman? It would have been more understandable and interesting had his wife been exactly the same personality wise but been extremely attractive. It would be easier to understand why someone like Ward might have stayed with her for a while.The sad truth is that many men, especially if they lack confidence like Ward does, would put up with a lot of stuff from a woman who may be a witch on wheels, but is nevertheless a babe. Well. We all have our cross to bear. 

Ward's friends are well aware of his predicament. When Ward is guilt-tripped into skipping their weekly golf outing, one of them wonders out loud if they shouldn't just kill the woman who is interfering with their lifelong friendship. This thought percolates but of course none of them mention it to Ward. During a get together at Ward's house, his wife Stacy (Dagmara Dominczyk) overhears one of his friends making flirtatious talk to an actress (Nicolette Sheridan). Because Stacy is at heart a bully she assumes that the man was cheating on his girlfriend and gleefully threatens to rat him out. Panicking, he accidentally on purpose kills Stacy. The remainder of the movie involves Ward, his friends and their wives/girlfriends trying to dispose of the body and avoid unnecessary contact with the police, one of whom is Ward's new neighbor. There is the normal trope of the quiet guy who has hitherto unexamined murderous impulses and the strutting macho guy who falls apart when faced with some ugly decisions. All told though the movie wasn't really that good both because of the messages it sent and the uneven tone. This is just a reworking of Very Bad Things and a few other films I am not interested in seeing again. There is eye candy for both genders as anyone who's read Murder Machine knows when you're disposing of a corpse you need to strip down to your boxers or bra and panties to avoid getting incriminating material on your clothing. Other actors include Scott Foley, Patrick Wilson, James Carpinello, and Amy Acker. 
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Movie Reviews: The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies
directed by Peter Jackson

I really wasn't planning to see this but the regular season of college football is over. I had a few hours to kill during my all too brief holiday break. And I can be a completist. So I figured what the heck. In the previous two reviews I already pointed out my modest displeasure with Jackson's alteration of source material supposedly to make the story more female friendly, the inclusion of greater violence, and the general more and more approach to padding out a simple children's book into 3 sprawling LOTR prequels.  Well been there, done that. Jackson and his co-creators have a certain style and preference. I don't think any of them are changing those things at this point in their lives. Either you can deal with it or you can't. I probably should have waited for DVD for this release as my brother has promised he will do. There is the greater question of how far can you stretch an adaptation before the original meaning of the story or the characters has been lost. As we've discussed before this is always a tricky issue. The films Exodus, Noah and The Passion of the Christ take key protagonists who are critical to Christianity and Judaism and portray them as European when these characters were not European. One reason for this is almost certainly financial but another is likely the fact that most of the people producing, financing and directing such films are of European descent and see no issue with writing themselves into the center of the story. I mention all of that to point out that I think that such changes to religious depictions are much more damaging to people than Jackson and crew changing Tolkien's fantasy work to include more women warriors, doomed cross-species romances and aggressively Scottish dwarves. As an interesting aside, in real life Tolkien mused that his dwarves might be considered similar to Jews (slightly different creation story, different language, and lost homeland). Anyway. It bears repeating that this film is less of an adaptation of The Hobbit and more of an "inspired by The Hobbit". I had to keep reminding myself of that while I was watching the movie. In the big picture, Jackson's alterations, whether they work or not, whether I like them or not, don't change the book.

The movie is also AFAIK the last Tolkien piece that Jackson will be able to interpret for the big screen as the Tolkien estate has steadfastly refused to license any more of Tolkien's novels to anyone, most especially Peter Jackson.

When last we left our bloated storyline Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) had just departed The Lonely Mountain to bring fire and blood to the human inhabitants of Laketown. Smaug's attack was suitably impressive. It reminded us of just how dangerous dragons can be. In ancient times the Dark Lord Morgoth had several such dragons, far larger than even Smaug. Smaug is likely the last of his kind and not as large as his forebears. But he's still deadly enough to lay waste to Laketown. He does just that right up until the time that Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) escapes from jail and puts his last arrow, the Black Arrow, into Smaug's heart, killing him. As the previous town master has perished in the attack, Bard becomes town leader by popular acclaim. He decides to seek shelter in the Mountain and the ruined human city of Dale, hoping that the dwarves will provide assistance and also some wealth to help rebuild the homes of their human allies and neighbors. It's the right thing to do. Not all of Smaug's hoard was dwarvish in origin. And Bard did after all kill Smaug, who would not have attacked were it not for the dwarves. A heroic act like that ought to be worth a little something in Bard's opinion. But the dwarvish leader and now King Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) is really not that interested in helping others at present. And he has exactly no intent of giving up any of his gold. He's looking for the Arkenstone, the most valued jewel among all the treasure and symbol of his rule. He's unaware that Bilbo (Martin Freeman) has it. Thorin is becoming increasingly paranoid and prejudiced about non-dwarves. And as the search for the Arkenstone drags on, Thorin starts to cast a side eye at his dwarvish relatives and friends.

In what I thought was the film's most interesting and well done scene the White Council led by Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) attacks Dol Guldur, rescuing Gandalf (Ian Mckellen) and drives out the revealed Sauron (Cumberbatch again) and his Nazgul. Of course by now everyone and their mama has heard of the death of Smaug and the presumably undefended hoard. And everybody wants some. So an elvish army led by the primly prejudiced King Thranduil (Lee Pace) shows up at the Mountain to bring food and gear to the human refugees but more importantly to stake their own claim to elvish heirlooms in Smaug's hoard. Thorin is becoming a greedy lunatic but he's no stranger to war. Seeing the gathering hosts he sends off a message to his cousin Dain Ironfoot (Billy Connolly from The Boondock Saints) to come heavy right now. By Gandalf's account Dain (and Connolly really has fun with this role and his accent) is by far the less reasonable of the two cousins. Although Bilbo and Bard both try to negotiate peace war appears imminent among men, elves and dwarves. Until the Orcs show up.

This film (especially the last 45 minutes) was a special effects extravaganza but it didn't really need to be. There's very little that's emotionally involving. This is unlike the book. It's seen most clearly with Fili and Kili, Thorin's nephews. In the film Thorin's tactical mistakes and the aforementioned elf-dwarf romantic love lead to his relatives' doom. In the book it's honor and loyalty (feudal and familial) that bring their end in the true Northern warrior tradition. "Fili and Kili had fallen defending [Thorin] with shield and body, for he was their mother's elder brother". Perhaps, all things considered, this is a small change but to me it's an example of how Jackson missed or misread some key themes in The Hobbit. YMMV. It was particularly needlessly maudlin to have women and children at the battle. Some of this looked like outtakes from the Helm's Deep battle in LOTR 2. Much of the quirkiness and sense of wonder that was there in the book was lost in the translation to the screen. To be fair by the time of the battle the book had taken a slightly darker tone but that was a brief change in something that until that point had been mostly whimsical. I think Jackson was pushing the prequel idea a little too much. This was nonetheless the most satisfying installment of the trilogy, primarily because it's over. It had some humor but little from the book. You can safely wait to see this on DVD or VOD unless you just have to see long battles or drawn out duels right this instant. I am interested in seeing what else Richard Armitage has done or will do. The film's running time was about 2.5 hours.
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Book Reviews: Revival

Revival
by Stephen King

I wonder if as we age we all begin to have more feelings of nostalgia. Perhaps it is also the case that our mortality is more on our minds. That's certainly the case for me. I wouldn't call myself old just yet but I am certainly neither young nor any longer under the illusion that I am going to live forever. I don't know if that is the case with Stephen King. Fictional books are not autobiographies. Fiction doesn't necessarily tell you anything about what the author is actually thinking about or experiencing in his or her personal life. Nevertheless it is interesting that it seems that after King's near death at the hands of an inattentive motorist and his self-acknowledged entry into senior citizen status more of his books have horrific car accidents, narrative grumbles about aging and its indignities and very sharp tones of regret and nostalgia. A character in Revival points out that humans have three age ranges : youth, middle age and how the f*** did I get so old? But of course all of this could be completely coincidental. Only King knows for sure. In the foreword to Revival King name checks some of the writers who have influenced him. These include such luminaries as Arthur Machen, Mary Shelley and H.P. Lovecraft. The introductory quote is the famous Lovecraft couplet "That is not dead which can eternal lie/And with strange aeons even death may die". Revival is a loving homage to all of those writers and more while still being an identifiable King work. Like many King stories it has references to his earlier creations. Revival's tone just screams out Joyland, from the first page to the very last. There are numerous stylistic similarities, from the first person framework, to the old man looking back at his life and remembering the glory and embarrassment of first time sex, to the excitement of a man actually discovering his true talents. One character in Revival even points out that he briefly worked at the Joyland carnival. I will have to go back and peruse Joyland to see if that was the case. Like Joyland, Revival generally keeps the open supernatural stuff off the page until later but unlike Joyland  the reader is aware much earlier that something strange is going on.

I don't think that Revival ever went for the gross out (my definition of gross out might differ from yours) but King has never needed to do that. He can and has accomplished that goal in several books but that's not what I enjoy about his work. His horrors are usually quite grounded in everyday reality. Looking at life there's quite enough horror to go around for everyone without having to include supernatural events to scare people. One of King's gifts is to meld the supernatural with the prosaic in a manner which allows the reader to easily suspend disbelief.

This story reminded me of Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, Frankenstein and several Lovecraft stories featuring the malign god Nyarlathotep. Nyarlathotep maliciously shares and displays many scientific and even magical advances that generally have the effect of driving humans mad. Revival also had a big nod to the mad scientist motif, especially as inspired by real life oddball scientist and engineer Nikola Tesla (who may himself have been an inspiration for Lovecraft's Nyarlathotep). Revival takes place over fifty years but it doesn't drag. The book is around 400 pages in hardcover.

In 1960's small town Maine a new Methodist preacher named Charles Jacobs arrives to become the new pastor. The very first person he meets and befriends is Jamie Morton, the youngest son in the large Morton family. Reverend Jacobs is a good man, a friendly one, who even plays in the dirt with Jamie as Jamie plays war. Jacobs is not a fire and brimstone type of preacher but he still increases the church's popularity. The town's women and girls are attracted to his youth and good looks while the men and boys feel the same way about his beautiful blonde piano playing wife Patsy. And everyone adores the couple's cute son Morrie. Reverend Jacobs is fascinated by electricity. He is something of an amateur scientist/physicist. He finds ways to link the wonders of electricity and the natural universe to God's message when he preaches. Jacobs also displays more practical applications for his electrical inventions when he is able to heal Jamie's brother Conrad from an accident which has left him mute. Of course as this is a King book, grief and tragedy are not far off. When a horrible accident occurs Reverend Jacobs spectacularly loses his faith and leaves the town. Jamie grows up to become a touring and session rock guitarist. He's struggling with his own losses and pains. He's also fallen into a nasty heroin addiction. By chance he comes across the Reverend Jacobs again. Jacobs is still friendly but has taken his interest in electricity far beyond what it was in Jamie's youth. Jacobs thinks he can heal Jamie of his addiction. Jacobs thinks he can do even more. Jamie is not sure that the pastor is still the same good man he knew in his youth. There is, pardon the pun, a special spark between the two men and no I am not talking anything of a sexual nature. An uneasy relationship is restarted, one that will last for years in some form or another.

There are events in the universe that we can not perceive unassisted (visible light is only a small portion of the electro-magnetic spectrum) and other phenomena that we do not yet fully understand (e.g. dark energy) The world we think we know is experienced quite differently by creatures who have senses far superior to ours (dogs and scent) or who possess senses we lack (sharks and electroreception). What would life look like if we pulled back the veil of this world? Are there truly things man is not meant to know? This book raises and depending on what you think of the ending, answers that question. Revival is also a love letter to music and musicians. King played guitar with the just recently retired all author rock band The Rock Bottom Remainders. Revival has a few potshots at faith healers and evangelicals. I didn't enjoy this quite as much as some of King's earlier works but it's still good. Most of the shudders came from the idea of aging, disease and death and not so much things that go bump in the night. Anyone who has ever had to deal with the health issues of stubborn siblings may nod their head in recognition while reading some passages.

Disturbed Man Kills Two NYPD Officers: Blame Game Ensues

As you might have noticed (and I was planning on writing a separate post touching on this and still may later this week or next) there have been recent nationwide protests about the level of (often deadly) violence which US local police forces use against Black Americans, especially Black males, especially young and/or unarmed Black males. In the cases of the deaths of Michael Brown, John Crawford and Eric Garner, mostly white grand juries and/or prosecutors refused to charge the police with any crime at all. Some white supporters of police not only applaud and celebrate these no indictment outcomes but take to the media to lecture black people on their actual or perceived shortcomings and point out that in the big picture, police killings of citizens are relatively rare events. So quit crying and be happy you're living in America. Or something. The same people taking a phlegmatic view about police on citizen violence started singing a different tune when a disturbed and violent young man shot and killed two NYPD police officers, after shooting his girlfriend and before killing himself.

Two police officers sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn were shot at point-blank range and killed on Saturday afternoon by a man who, officials said, had traveled to the city from Baltimore vowing to kill officers. The suspect then committed suicide with the same gun, the authorities said. The officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were in the car near Myrtle and Tompkins Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant in the shadow of a tall housing project when the gunman, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, walked up to the passenger-side window and assumed a firing stance, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said. Mr. Brinsley shot several rounds into the heads and upper bodies of the officers, who never drew their weapons, the authorities said.

Suddenly the relatively rare incident of a citizen shooting and killing two police officers became the foreseeable outcome of "anti-police rhetoric" and "incendiary comments" made by various anti-police brutality protesters and such persons as President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and professional gadfly/MSNBC host Al Sharpton and probably any other black person to the left of Ben Carson. At least that is what former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Union leader Pat Lynch said.

To paraphrase and expand on what a friend on facebook pointed out recently, remember the meltdown the right-wing media and police unions had over the (alleged) murder of a Pennsylvania state trooper by right-winger Eric Frein? Remember how mad Giuliani and Sean Hannity got at their right wing drinking buddies for all the murderous anti-government and anti-police sentiment that presaged the murders of police officers by Cliven Bundy supporters Jerad and Amanda Miller? Remember how right-wing Congressman Steve King of Iowa harshly criticized the anti-tax/militia members of the right for setting the stage for the murderous actions of Joseph Stack?  Remember how conservatives were horrified about the murders committed by Fox News viewer Jim David Adkisson who felt compelled to murder Unitarians because they were liberal? Conservatives felt so despondent about this that they forced Fox News to reduce or eliminate its demonization of liberals. Right. Of course you don't remember any of that because none of it ever took place. Rather than condemn Stack, Congressman Steve King did all but say he sympathized with him and blamed the IRS for existing. By the standard which people like Giuliani or Congressman Peter King seek to apply to others they themselves have "blood on their hands". They would disagree with this. Their argument is of course weak. They seek to delegitimize all protest against police brutality and police misconduct. It's the same media playbook that conservatives used against MLK and others in the sixties. Giuliani is incapable of perceiving that such a thing as police misconduct exists. It's a blind spot that both he and several police officers seem to share. I remain amazed that such a bitterly malevolent person was ever elected to any office but that's an essay for another day.

It apparently has to be written out in bold letters but it is possible to protest against police brutality and murder of citizens without also cheering for the murder of police officers. And I think most decent Americans realize this. If I protest against racist police that doesn't automatically mean that I hate all white people or all police. That said, much as Malcolm X once got in hot water for saying that chickens coming home to roost was a certainty, it's important to realize that a system that does not provide a sense of justice will see more and more confrontations and killings between officers and citizens. If we don't want this (and who does?), all of us must work to weed out and punish the bad officers. If the man who murdered those officers hadn't killed himself it's a certainty that unlike police officers who have killed citizens, he would have been arrested, indicted and convicted. Giuliani is not going to dig up irrelevant dirt on the deceased officers as he did with unarmed Black men shot by police. No one is going to claim, as Donald Trump did with the vindicated Central Park Five, that these police weren't angels. No one is going to wonder if the police did anything to cause Mr. Brinsley to fear for his life and use justified force. So just as I don't think that the actions of Darren Wilson or Daniel Pantaleo mean that all officers are murderous goons, I don't think that protesting their brutality means you cheer Brinsley. I don't want cops shooting innocent people. I also don't want crazy people shooting cops. It's not an either/or situation. And whether Giuliani or Lynch or anyone else like protests or not they are lawful. I am sure that were a person like Giuliani to obtain greater power than he had he would eliminate protests altogether but fortunately this little amendment is still in effect. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What are your thoughts?