Thursday, June 9, 2011

THE RESIGNATION SPEECH

Thank you members of the press. I will be making a brief statement and at the conclusion of my statement I will not be taking any questions.

The past two weeks have been a very trying time for me and my family. My behavior has wrought an immeasurable degree of shame upon myself and the persons I care about and love the most. As some of my fellow Democratic elected officials in our nation's capitol have begun to call for my resignation, what has become equally painful has been watching my party, which has historically been totally devoid of shame, suddenly consider the importance of a man's character.

I belong to a party that turned a blind eye, and winked the other, when one of our members drove an innocent woman into a river and left her to die. Two members of our party sandwiched a restaurant waitress between them, and in their inebriated state, sexually assaulted her and were able to return to the Congress with pats on the back and an eventual run for the presidency. One of our members housed a pimp who ran a burgeoning house of prostitution right in the members home and was merely required to evict said pimp. Resignations were not demanded from any of these Democrats.

We have even had a major party member being sexually serviced by a female federal employee, during working hours, as the public paid for her time and his secretary's time who insured the occurrence of those rendezvous. That Democrat and his taxpayer paid concubine also lied and conspired to fix the outcome of a federal civil case. Other members of my party have grossly exceeded the alcoholic content level legally required to drive a motor vehicle and received a taxpayer paid ride home instead of a ride to jail.

My fellow Americans, as I make no excuses for the actions that has suddenly given Washington Democrats a moral conscience in calling for my resignation, it is incumbent upon you to demand that same and equal standard whenever their sleazy, inappropriate, felonious and other criminal behavior becomes apparent.

I will spend the next few weeks cleaning out my offices, writing letters of recommendations for my staff and then formally tender my resignation as part of the New York Delegation of the United States House of Representatives effective July 4, 2011. It is now clear to me that I can no longer be an effective spokesman and legislator in trying to serve my constituents and my country alongside the most magnificent lot of sanctimonious hypocrites ever to walk the halls of Congress and call themselves Democrats. And as for the swirling rumors that I have been approached by CNN to co-host a television show called WEINER-SPITZER - no comment.

Monday, March 21, 2011

PROFILING A HATE-FUL CRIME

Can a criminal act that inflicts extreme and emotional anguish on a person or persons based on their race or ethnicity, be considered a hate crime? Should it?

Apparently the Manhattan DA's office, charged with adjudicating the case of former New York weatherperson, Heidi Jones, for filing a false police report does not believe so. It has recently been reported that her attorney and the District Attorney's office is working out a "no jail" resolution for her crime.

Ms. Jones' creation of a fictitious "Hispanic" assailant was a conscious, deliberate choice which has serious implications that should not be ignored. We may not know how many NYPD man-hours were spent investigating her false accusation. And we may not know how many innocent Latino males were stopped, frisked, harassed or interrogated by the police before Ms. Jones' story began to fall apart. But we do know those numbers should have been zero. According to statistics, we also know that tens of thousands of innocent black and Latino males, young and old, are routinely stopped and frisked because they allegedly "fit the description," or is a "person of interest" in an ongoing police investigation. And this fictional attack against Ms. Jones in Central Park by this phantom "Hispanic male" feeds an ugly, neverending, convenient stereotype.

Hopefully we are over the days of white mobs burning down black communities and killing innocent black families over false allegations of white women accusing black men of rape. However, when white South Carolina mother, Susan Smith, murdered her two children and white Massachusetts husband, Charles Stuart murdered his wife, they both reported being carjacked - Smith claiming a black man drove off with her two children, Stuart claiming he and his wife were shot by a black man. When the news media inundated the airwaves with these stories, lost in their coverage was the havoc rained down upon innocent black men, as law enforcement searched for non-existent suspects, before the claims of the murderers began to unravel.

In New York, black Hip-Hop artists have been jailed, or are awaiting jail terms for illegal gun possession. Former NY Giant Wide Receiver, Plaxico Burress, currently in jail for gun possession drew high profile calls for his incarceration - one by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to show that celebrities do not get special treatment. However, the wife of television anchorman, Lou Dobbs, and entertainer Harry Connick Jr. did not receive similar public disdain, or jail time, for their New York gun possession charge. Apparently, it is black celebrities that do not get special treatment in New York.

Now the New York justice system is poised to continue its very long tradition of race-based special treatment. Heidi Jones' crime has a long and storied American history. It has spawned hatred and violence against innocent victims. It has cost lives and reputations - and it is a crime that needs to be more appropriately and severely punished. This heralded young woman was a news personality for a major market television affiliate of a major American communications corporation. This Heidi is not some curly-topped, orphaned Shirley Temple that should be sent home to live with her grandfather. She should be sent to jail.

Friday, March 4, 2011

SOFT SPEAKING, BIG STICKS and SHEDDING BLOOD

As the world watches events unfold in much of northern Africa, AKA the Middle East, cries of revolution and democracy flood every worldwide vehicle of communication. The pontificating politicos and the prognosticating punditry are virtually manic in their assessment of what America should do and/or what our President should say. And they are disturbed by the violence and bloodshed perpetrated against the otherwise peaceful protestors seeking independence from tyranny.

Blinded by the extremely cantankerous, but bloodless, spectacle of the 2000 Bush v. Gore election, we shine a self-congratulatory light on the greatness of our democracy. But it wasn't always that way. We conveniently ignore all the blood shed to get us to those 36 days after that infamous November 2000 Election Day. Those 56 signers of a very specific, accusatory 1776 document would have certainly been pleased had King George simply packed up the British military and said, "Fine. It's yours!" But, having pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, it was clear that there was no expectation of a regal capitulation.

In fact, they specifically fashioned a 2nd Amendment to their founding document in the sincere belief that bloodshed will often be a necessary defense against tyranny. And they were right. Their new nation has involved itself in several wars since its independence - including a major domestic conflict less than 100 years after its founding, lasting 4 years and costing over 500,000 lives and untold gallons of blood. We have also expended blood and lives abroad battling tyranny against others. Why should we expect countries steeped in centuries of oligarchies be any different! Why the outrage when tyrants and despots kill and maim the protesting lovers of freedom in order to protect their fiefdoms! Such outrage is a sign of our abject ignorance of history.

Our own recent history has seen blood spilled at the teeth of police dogs and fire hoses, baseball bats and arson, firebombs and via the end of a hangman's noose - all in defiance of freedom and democracy and all in the name of state's rights. And, all under the watchful eyes of American dictators. Only our tyrants were titled Director J. Edgar Hoover, Gov. George Wallace, Gov. Orval Faubus, and Sheriff Bull Conner just to name a few. More than 20 years after the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, American children and their parents were attacked and beaten simply for taking their offspring to school. And in 1968, after a relatively peaceful protest march in Memphis, Tennessee, a single gunshot aimed at the balcony of the Lorraine Motel set off a violent, nationwide, chain of events that would have lasting repercussions.

We are watching today's events of some of our own American history being played out worldwide. It is folly to believe that despotism will just walk away and die a quiet death. Freedom is never free. To quote abolitionist, and former slave, Frederick Douglass, "Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will." And one of the universal certainties in escaping the iron fist of British kings or Libyan Colonels is that there will be blood.