Random Ideas

This week has been one of historic moments. Different people have had different reactions.

Some people have paraded through the streets and cheered with joy about the death of a truly evil man being gunned down. They cheer for justice with a blood lust that would impress my Viking ancestors. They shout with glee that Bin Laden was shot twice in his home. They scream that this is what he gets for messing with us. I can understand this reaction. I live in New York. I saw the towers fall. I used to work in Tower Two.

Others weep and say that any death is a failure and that even the life of such a man is valued and must be preserved. “Why not imprison him and put him on trial?” they say. I can see their point. We are a nation of laws and have all been raised with at least some respect for human life.

I say that both are wrong.

To take joy in the ending of any human life, we diminish our own humanity. This is a loss that is hard to reverse. Taking a human life is not a thing to celebrate or brag about. It is sad. He was the son of a father and mother who had to have loved him. He had children who loved him. They will hurt for years to come at the loss of this man.

However, this man was a cancer on the body of humanity. His evil spread wide and is still destroying the healthy lives of many who live on. He convinced many people to do evil and help the disease of his hatred spread. Innocent lives were snuffed out by the cruel and inhumane actions of him and his followers. How many fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, children and siblings have lost loved ones forever because his ideology said they must die a horrible death to make his point?

No, we should not kill a demented and diseased animal out of hate. Putting down such a creature is sad. It is a mercy to kill it and remove it from the world. We should only see it as a required action to preserve the safety of innocents. Do we taunt a tumor as we kill it with radiation? Or do we focus on helping the healthy flesh that remains to survive and heal? Do we yell abuse and the diseased limb that has had to be amputated? Or do we try to find ways to help the body recover the function that disease took from it?

Yes, he had to die. No, we don’t have to be transformed into his messengers by our removal of the diseased offal that was Osama. He is gone. It is sad that a man could be twisted into such a monster. But do not become a monster because of it.

In a truly silly turn of events, a politician is questioning somebody else’s ethics! I speak of the Republican idiot who took it upon himself to call Natalie Portman a bad role model. Let’s see, she is in a long term commited relationship and engaged to be married to the father of the child she is expecting. She is employed. She has never had any issues of substance abuse or addiction to anything. She is well respected among her peers…

To be fair, let’s look at someone who Huckabee did NOT remark on. Charlie Sheen has been prancing about like a lunatic for the last month showing his ass. He has been caught numerous times and even admitted to hiring hookers and strippers. His drug addictions and chemically altered binges are truly legendary. He exposed his twin sons to an environment filled with hookers and drugs. Sheen is even being accused of threatening to decapitate his estranged wife!

Does his silence mean that Huckabee thinks Sheen is a better role model than Portman?!?!? That would sound like the ethical point of view of a politician. They are just not known for being so open about it. Then again, a conservative Republican might have singled Portman out for other criteria that separate her from Sheen…

Now, he takes some of it back… He even says he does not “criticize the hardworking single mothers in our country.” Then, maybe he should tell us exactly why he thinks Ms. Portman is a worse example than Mr. Sheen.

The reality is, she is showing the young women out there, who may not choose to marry before having a child, that there is a right way to do it. Be employed. Be a good and healthy person. Do not jump into it before you know you can provide a good home for your child.

The last politician who made this kind of public statement about a famous star was Dan Quayle… Maybe Huchabee could use a better “role model” himself?

Yes, the UN has, yet again, given a podium to one of the most idiotic figureheads in the world. Somehow, the puppet president of the fundamentalist dictatorship was given free reign to verbally abuse anyone willing to sit through his yammering tirade of verbal abuse and lowbrow conspiracy theory. Honestly, anyone over the age of five ( if they can read ) would know better than to agree with. He even went so far as to blame 911 on the US as some sort of nebulous conspiracy to make money. Ignoring for a moment that there are audio and video recordings and piles of evidence, as well as signed confessions that verify the guilt of Osama Bin Laden and various other afghan and Taliban operatives. It is sheer stupidity to give this maniac a platform to spout his tripe and trash to the masses. Meanwhile, he openly mocks and defies the world with his continued efforts to develop nuclear weapons. When will we cease to enable such insanity? All we have to do is cut businesses off from dealing with this criminal state and penalize anyone who does. War is not required, but harsh penalties are.

You know, it’s funny. Fundamentalist groups are always protesting movies over odd little details in movies. They even raised a stink about the mannish ugly step sister in Shrek because they chose to see her as a transvestite. Watching a children’s movie with my daughter, I realized that the holy rollers had missed a big one. After all, bees don’t have males who travel outside of the hive. That would mean that the bee character in the move was in fact female. Shouldn’t they be protesting and raising a stink about a lesbian couple in a child’s movie? This just goes to show, these people are very uneven in the application of their rules. What about the gay penguins? Not a word from the fundies on that one. Of course, one of them went straight… Maybe that’s why they were not bothered. Bisexual penguins and gay bees, maybe the fundamentalists are calming down. Maybe, in a few years and with enough alternative lifestyle animals, they will join in on a gay/lesbian parade…