For loyal readers who’ve wondered if I’ve been taken over by the brain-eating movie reviewer from Mars. I’m still alive. I’ve been busy with other projects and personal issues I won’t bore you with.

I’ve been posting the TV and movie reviews I do for the print-only edition of the newspaper I work for as kind of a place holder, and because I think they’re kind of good in a mostly-inconsequential way. At least they appear to be the stuff I get the most complimentary remarks about from readers and fellow-journalists.

But what I’ve been really busy with, and haven’t chosen to unveil until now, it trying to become a self-syndicated columnist.

Some know I had a weekly column at my last newspaper. Well, now I’m at a bigger paper with a bigger staff, and they say, “Blog.” I have posted some of my newspaper blog stuff and will probably do some more, but I’m kind of uneasy about putting up a lot of stuff on my site that I do on company time.

After having gotten polite brush-offs from major syndicates, I discovered Minnesota’s own Jill Pertler, who is a self-syndicated columnist.

Soooo, what I’ve been doing is cranking out a column every week. I have a source list of Minnesota newspapers with contact data. Every week I cut about 20 from that list, and send a column to each of them with a contact letter, addressed personally to the editor. Then I add each to my long list of Minnesota editors, and send each weeks submission to the whole list.

It’s a bit tedious to be sure. But, I’ve gotten one contract so far and several nibbles. Pretty good after a couple months. Pertler said try it for six!

I haven’t been posting my stuff yet, because of course you don’t want to give away for free what you’re trying to sell. Not until a decent interval has passed for sure. And besides, the blog format is a bit different from newspaper column style. However I’m going to start posting after that decent interval has passed, just to archive these and make them available to potential subscribers.

So without further ado, here’s one from a couple weeks ago>

Slim majorities
By Steve Browne

President Obama is currently being roasted for an apparent gaff about the Supreme Court.

In regards to the current case before the court concerning the constitutionality of Obamacare, the president said on April 2, “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

Right wing pundits are having a field day bludgeoning Obama, a graduate of Harvard law school, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, and one-time lecturer (not a professor) on constitutional law with Marbury v Madison, the 1803 case that established the principle of judicial review. Not to mention the fact Obamacare passed by seven votes, hardly a “strong majority.”

What is bothering me is less the president’s views on judicial review than those seven votes.

What occurred to me while thinking about this issue was Thomas Jefferson’s remark, “Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.”

Jefferson of course, could toss off more profound observations in an offhand remark than most of today’s political thinkers can in a book.

This is what is bothering me about an awful lot of issues these days: energy policy, foreign policy, healthcare, etc.

Everyone can see these issues split the country right down the middle – and that’s precisely why we should be treading carefully here.

These proposed policies tend to be of the top-down, one-size-fits-all, my-way-or-the-highway kind. There’s little room for significant decision-making on the state and local level – or individual choice for that matter. You pays your taxes, you get your marching orders.

Now some decisions by government necessarily have to be of this kind. If we’re going to war, you don’t get to say, “No thanks, not my war,” and continue to trade with, travel to, or even send letters to the enemy country. There’s a word for that – treason.

Or for that matter, try opting out of using the roads.

But the issues we’re dealing with today are a lot less pressing than eminent war. Sorry, you may believe the climate is causing the seas to rise and flood Miami, but it’s not happening on a time scale equal to the Pearl Harbor attack, nor is it quite so obvious to all that the threat is looming as rapidly as some passionately believe.

People are not dying en mass in the streets from lack of health insurance, whatever the proponents of nationalized single-payer insurance say.

Yes it is possible man-caused climate change may have serious consequences down the road. Yes there are many individual hardships caused by skyrocketing medical costs. But the point is, these are complex issues, with wide range for honest disagreement among honest men. We are not going to solve them with government-mandated policies crafted slap-dash in six months!

And we are not going to make the acrimony go away by half the population forcing the policy down the throats of the other half. If the differences of opinion on any significant issue amount to a few percentage points (and in fact, in the case of Obamacare, polls show it’s a lot more unpopular than that,) then heck, that’s the percentage of people who change their minds six times before breakfast!

Consider World War II, the last war we had a nearly universal consensus for, versus Vietnam. Ask why the British traitor Lord Haw-Haw was executed and Tokyo Rose imprisoned, while Jane Fonda returned from making propaganda tours in North Vietnam and nobody dared lay a finger on her?

Precisely because WWII had universal approval, while Vietnam was so deeply divisive.

One of the principles of constitutionally limited government is that all decisions which can be left to individual citizens – should be. And for precisely this reason. Deeply divisive issues wind up being decided on slender majorities, and those decisions rend our society and breed contempt for all authority and all law.

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I have often said that your belief in freedom and your respect for human rights is tested by your willingness to defend the freedom and support the rights of people you just flat despise.

This will tend to put one in uncomfortable and embarrassing situations from time to time. If you for example, defend the free speech rights of neo-Nazis, you know people are going to accuse you of being one.

Legendary journalist and uncompromising defender of freedom H.L. Mencken said, “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

I don’t think you find much of that kind of integrity around these days. There seem to be an awful lot of people in public life who condemn the same actions of people they dislike, that they excuse or actively justify in people they like.

We all remember the story of the Boston Massacre from our American History classes. The incident in 1750 when British soldiers fired on a mob, killing five men. The incident was used as propaganda by the pro-independence party to raise the tensions that led to the outbreak of revolution five years later.

I wonder how many people remember that the soldiers were defended on murder charges by John Adams, a fierce patriot and later first vice-president and second president of the United States?

Adams won the acquittal of six of the soldiers and succeeded in getting the sentence of two reduced to manslaughter, punished by a branding on the hand.

Adams wanted independence, but genuinely believed the soldiers were innocent of the charges. He was willing to kill them on the field of battle, but would not sully the cause of independence with an injustice, nor corrupt the law to serve an agenda.

But I’ve just found a contemporary example. Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative publication National Review, has an article, “John Edwards: Slimy, not criminal.”

Edwards is currently facing some pretty serious charges of violating campaign finance laws by paying hush money to his mistress and mother of his love child, while his wife was dying of cancer.

In the public sphere he has essentially no defenders. His own party has dropped him like a hot rock, and former friends and aids are testifying against him.

Lowry makes no secret of the fact that he thinks Edwards is a detestable human being. But he also lays out in detail why Edwards’ actions, though morally reprehensible, are not criminal.

“If Edwards were being prosecuted for shameful dereliction of duty as a husband and father, he’d deserve 30 years of hard labor. If he were on trial for extreme oleaginous insincerity, he’d deserve to be sent to the nearest supermax prison. If he could be charged with running two faux-populist presidential campaigns (first in 2004, then in 2008) that were all about stroking his own ego, he’d deserve to hang at dawn.

“None of these things is a criminal offense, though. And neither is paying hush money to your mistress. In the case of United States of America v. Johnny Reid Edwards, it is the United States of America that is out of line…

“The prosecution is a naked exercise in attempting to punish a loathsome man for his loathsomeness. As such, it is an offense against the rule of law, which depends on clear rules and dispassionate judgments. Every wrong — even flagrant wrongs, played out in public and involving mind-boggling deceit — is not a crime. By stretching the laws to try to reach Edwards, the government is creating the precedent for future ambiguous, politicized prosecutions, perhaps of figures much less blameworthy than the reviled man currently in the dock.

“John Edwards belongs under a rock, but not in jail.”

Good for you Lowry! Whether one agrees or disagrees with your politics, that shows integrity and ethical consistency.

And hey, you gotta love a writer who can use phrases like, “oleaginous insincerity.”

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Note: Cross-posted from my newspaper blog.

Veteran broadcast journalist Mike Wallace died yesterday at the age of 93.

Wallace was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on May 9, 1918, to Russian Jewish immigrant parents originally named Wallik, and his life only got more interesting from there on.

Wallace was one of the few remaining survivors of the beginnings of broadcast journalism, back when it was common to have a wider variety of experience than is even possible today. He was at various times a commercial pitchman, a game show host, radio narrator for shows such as the original Sky King and The Green Hornet, sportscaster, and stand-up comic (didn’t know that one did you?)

He also served as a communications officer on a U.S. Navy sub tender during World War II.

I feel safe in saying no journalist starting out these days could ever amass a resume like that.

My first memories of Mike Wallace were from the half-hour documentary Biography, which featured informative and interesting, but mostly softball pocket bios of prominent people, living and dead.

In 1959 Wallace and Louis Lomax produced The Hate That Hate Produced, a five-part documentary on The Nation of Islam, featuring one Louis X, later known as Louis Farrakhan.

Wallace began, “While city officials, state agencies, white liberals, and sober-minded Negroes stand idly by, a group of Negro dissenters is taking to street-corner step ladders, church pulpits, sports arenas, and ballroom platforms across the United States, to preach a gospel of hate that would set off a federal investigation if it were preached by Southern whites.”

With Farrakhan responding, “I charge the white man with being the greatest liar on earth! I charge the white man with being the greatest drunkard on earth…. I charge the white man with being the greatest gambler on earth. I charge the white man, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, with being the greatest murderer on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest peace-breaker on earth…. I charge the white man with being the greatest robber on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest deceiver on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest trouble-maker on earth. So therefore, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you, bring back a verdict of guilty as charged!”

It would not be the last time Wallace and Farrakhan clashed on air.

Contemporary critics have called the documentary a “caricature,” “one-sided,” and even “yellow journalism,” but The Nation of Islam and Farrakhan have no reason to complain. Farrkhan and Malcolm X were catapulted to fame and became frequent interview subjects, college speakers, and talk show guests (before Malcolm X’s assassination,) and the Nation of Islam’s membership doubled to 60,000 in the weeks after the broadcast.

Whether one regards that as a desirable outcome or not, it illustrates something about Wallace as an interviewer. He let his subjects have their say.

Well yes, but isn’t that what journalists are supposed to do?

Ideally yes, but in this day and age there are an awful lot of so-called journalists who constantly interrupt their subjects, cut them off, argue with them, and shamefully edit their responses.

Wallace did a great service to a lot of people when he revealed he had been treated for severe clinical depression, including a suicide attempt. He said it took him a while to acknowledge because he thought of it as a shameful weakness.

He was one of the founders of 60 Minutes, which created the genre of TV news magazine.

Wallace could be startlingly naive at times. In one interview he spoke of his long professional relationship with Yasser Arafat, and how he’d come to admire him. This from an intelligent, mostly well-informed Jewish journalist would be a little like hearing Walter Lippman profess his admiration for Adolf Hitler. It should serve as a cautionary tale, that journalists get out and about a lot, but our experience on any given subject tends towards the superficial.

Wallace’s surviving son Chris is a journalist at FOX News. Mighty big shoes to fill, I must say.

Good by Mike. Somehow it doesn’t feel like TV News without you.

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Note: Cross-posted from my newspaper blog.

Today is Purim, a Jewish festival celebrated on the 14th day of the month of Adar in the Hebrew calendar. This year it runs from sunset on Wednesday, March 7, 2012, and ends sunset Thursday, March 8, 2012.

The Purim holy day celebrates the salvation of the Jews of ancient Persia from a plot to annihilate them by Haman, prime minister of King Ahasuerus in the 4th century BC.

The word “Purim” comes from a word meaning “lots,” because Haman picked the day of the massacre by drawing lots.

Haman’s plot was dramatically exposed when Ahasuerus’ new Queen Esther revealed at a feast that she was Jewish. The planned annihilation was canceled, Haman was hanged, and Esther’s cousin Mordechai replaced him as prime minister.

There was once a colorful expression that came from this when hanging was still used as a method of execution, to be “hanged higher than Haman.”

There was a later historical parallel that seems too good to be true, except that it is reasonably well attested to. In the 14th century King Kazimierz Wielki (Casimir the Great) of Poland, the last of the Piast Dynasty, invited Jews from all over Europe to settle in Poland. They eventually constituted about 15 percent of the population before the Holocaust.

Legend has it that Kazimierz had a Jewish mistress he loved greatly, who influenced him for the benefit of her people. Her name was Esterka – or in English, Esther.

Persia is of course, modern day Iran. The name “Iran” means “Aryan” and is a modern invention. I have had Iranian friends who still prefer to call themselves Persians though.

The parallels between the story of Esther and the boasts of the leaders of Iran that they will annihilate the Jews today are not lost on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who earlier this week presented President Obama with a copy of the “Megillah of Esther,” the Purim story.

However there’s an interesting historical factoid that nobody seems to notice, perhaps because we think of the stories in the Bible as myths, rather than history. The King of Persia’s name is recorded in the Book of Esther as Ahasuerus, but when studying history from a more secular point of view we use the Greek rendering of his name, Xerxes.

Xerxes was of course the Persian emperor who led the invasion of Greece that was delayed for a crucial time by the 300 Spartans and their allies at the Battle of Thermopylae, then defeated decisively at the naval battle of Salamis and the land battle at Plataea.

And if that’s not enough historical trivia, does anybody remember Grade B movie actor Richard Egan (1921-1987)?

In 1960 and 1962 Egan made two movies in a row. The first was “Esther and the King,” co-staring Joan Collins, where he played King Ahasuerus/Xerxes. In the second, “The 300 Spartans” he played King Leonidas of Sparta.

It’s still around on DVD in cheap movie bins and well worth the trip down memory lane. Egan had a style of acting that was a tad wooden, but I don’t think they ever got a better performance out of him.

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Note: Cross-posted on my newspaper blog.

On March 3, the heart of Lorcán Ua Tuathail, also known as St Laurence O’Toole, (1128 – 1180) was stolen from its iron cage mounted on a wall in Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin.

Christ Church Cathedral is not Roman Catholic, but Church of Ireland, an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion.

St. Lawrence was canonized in 1225 by Pope Honorius III, but I don’t suppose many on this side of the Atlantic would have ever heard of him if his preserved heart hadn’t been stolen. Reliquaries containing body parts of saints are a holdover from an earlier time. The Catholic Church still declares sainthood, but tends to be more low-key about relics these days. Though a vial of blood of Pope John Paul II, recently beatified, has been preserved and displayed.

Once in the Rila Monastery in Bulgaria I saw the preserved body of a local saint on display. The body was covered with a cloth, with a hole over the hand. People would buy cards with images of the saint and the monks would stroke them on the dessicated hand to sanctify them.

Since its separation from Rome, the Anglican communion has declared precisely one saint, the martyred King Charles I, so I suppose they have to take care of the ones they’ve still got. (Since my personal opinion is that Charles Stuart was indeed guilty of treason, this has been a source of some tension with my Anglo-Catholic relatives…)

One wonders what the heck the thief or thieves expect to get out of the heart of St. Lawrence? Do they intend to sell it to one of those rich collectors of stolen artwork one reads about in novels? And are there really any such? Is there really a black market in stolen masterpieces and holy relics?

Or was the motive religious in some twisted way? Did someone think a relic of the patron saint of Dublin didn’t belong in a church considered Protestant?

Of did someone steal if for their own private veneration? In which case, I’d think their conscience would start to trouble them after a while…

This is indeed a curious case, but I would not have you think I am inviting you to laugh at these things. I think all of us, whatever our religious opinions, have visited a place, or handled an object which seemed… somehow different and special. Call it holy, or sacred if you like. And quite obviously people have thought this way for some time. We have archeological evidence that shows places and objects treated as sacred going back to the stone age, and that Neanderthal Man treated their dead with reverence.

It is also odd that reportedly the thief or thieves took the heart and left several golden candlesticks alone. Curiouser and curiouser.

I shall be waiting with interest to see how this case turns out.

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Note: My personal blog is on indefinite hiatus, however I am cross-posting from my newspaper blog at The Marshall Independent and the print-only TV Guide.

The Occupy Oakland protests have turned a tad violent the news media reports. The country’s fifth largest port has been closed by demonstrators.

Some of the reports coming out of Oakland include:

After a rumor spread that the Whole Foods store had threatened to fire employees who participated in the protest, Regional President David Lannon announced on Facebook: “We totally support our Team Members participating in the General Strike today — rumors are false!”

It didn’t do him any good. Demonstrators wearing Guy Fawkes masks from the movie “V for Vendetta” trashed one Whole Foods store, breaking windows and spraypainting walls. Another Whole Foods that distributed water bottles to passersby was also attacked by masked demonstrators and forced to close.

(For those who haven’t seen it, “V for Vendetta” is about a lone “freedom-fighter” battling a tyrannical Christian theocracy that has somehow established itself in England. After rescuing a young woman from the secret police, the masked hero shows his moral superiority to the regime by imprisoning and brainwashing her to get her to see the awfulness of the regime, before he succeeds where the original Guy Fawkes failed and blows up the Houses of Parliament and presumably a number of bystanders.)

A Men’s Wearhouse in Oakland put up a huge poster saying, “We Stand With The 99%” and announced they’d be closed that day.

Demonstrators smashed their windows.

Demonstrators also vandalized ATMs and sprayed “F***” on Christ the Light Cathedral.

The Oakland city council responded by considering a resolution in support of “Occupy Oakland” and calling on the city administration to “collaborate with protesters”.

Full disclosure, I am no stranger to massive demonstrations. For about three months in 1997 I participated in the nightly street demonstrations in Belgrade, Yugoslavia protesting the Milosevic regime’s stealing of local government elections.

“Participate” might be a bit misleading. Since I returned to my apartment at night I had no choice other than to participate. Approximately 17 percent of the city’s population were on the streets every night, marching, singing, and making noise with pots and pans and a variety of home-made noisemakers during “pandemonium half-hour” when the official government news was broadcast.

I used to say I just took the first demonstration going home after work. Every night we’d march past an estimated 10,000 armed paramilitaries recruited mostly from Bosnian Serbs, because they had no connection with the city’s population. It was known Milosevic’s wife Mira “the Red Queen” wanted the paramilitaries to fire on the demonstrators.

Apparently they couldn’t find anyone willing to give the order. It was kicked downstairs as far as it could go, to a vice-chief of police, who flat refused even after government goons gave his son a beating. So I may owe my life to a Serbian cop.

A week or so after the regime had to capitulate to the demonstrators, that cop was machine-gunned in a pizza place near my work.

During months of nightly demonstrations I didn’t see any property vandalized, no windows broken, and I can’t recall much spraypainting of walls.

There were however some really great posters made by art students at the university. My favorite was Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator on a Harley holding up a red card, and below the words, “Hasta la vista Communista!”

The more I see of these Occupy whatever demonstrations, the more I miss Belgrade.

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Note: My personal blog is on indefinite hiatus, but I am cross-posting from my newspaper blog at the Marshall Independent.

More People With Criminal Justice Degrees Might Be in Order.

Amanda Knox is free after four years in an Italian prison and back home again.

American exchange student Knox was convicted, along with her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and Ivory Coast native Rudy Hermann Guede, of the sexual assault and murder of her room mate Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student, in 2007. Solecito was also freed, Guede remains in prison.

She was freed after an Italian appeals court found her not guilty. And to be perfectly clear, that’s “not guilty,” not a technicality, not “insufficient evidence to convict,” but NOT GUILTY.

Who knew?

Up until a few days ago I thought she was guilty as sin. Now I read that alleged DNA evidence was tainted and improperly collected (there are videos showing this,) that alleged evidence on her computer’s hard drive was destroyed by the prosecution, that damaging and contradictory statements she made were obtained during more than 50 continuous hours of questioning without a lawyer and possibly under physical duress, that the prosecutor is currently being investigated for improper actions in other unrelated cases… the list goes on.

It is now starting to seem like a pretty straightforward rape and murder committed by Hermann Guede, with no involvement by Knox or Sollecito. That in fact, that was the only conclusion warranted by the evidence from the beginning.

So where did this story of “Foxy Knoxy” the pervert sex maniac who helped assault and murder her room mate in an orgiastic frenzy come from?

Where else? The press. Both the Italian press, and unfortunately a lot of the American press as well.

The truth was, though tragic, rather boring. Sad to say, it’s the kind of thing that happens a lot in this fallen world.

Ah, but the myth was so much more exciting!

This is the kind of story all journalists should keep in the back of their mind.

A reader in the field of continuing education commented, “Next time, instead of sensationalizing a story whose ending has yet to be written, periodicals and television programs could focus on the lack of people paying attention in class while getting a degree in criminal justice. Collecting DNA is certainly not a job that should ever be botched and it would appear that even high profile investigators can make mistakes which land people in jail for four years, at least. Though the story has ended, in a particularly unfantastic manner, for most, those in the criminal justice and journalism fields should find themselves forever changed.”

Oh, but now Amanda Knox has been given another nickname by journalists speculating about possible book and movie deals. How does “Ft. Knox” sound to you?

Note: Links in the above post constitute paid advertising.

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Note: Cross-posted at “Steve’s Place” at the Marshall Independent.

“It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.” Moses Maimonides (1135-1204,) Sefer Hamitzvot [Book of the Commandments]

Well the trial of Casey Anthony is over, and almost nobody is happy about it. Apparently nobody really believes she is innocent of murdering her little girl, not even her parents to judge by their actions.

This is not the same thing as the story of Casey Anthony being over of course. The news hounds will be following her around for quite some time now you may be sure. There are already rumbles of civil cases being filed, attempts to keep her from profiting from the inevitable tabloid and movie deals, etc.

From the statements of two of the jurors, it seems they didn’t really want to return a verdict of “not guilty” but didn’t feel they had the right to convict based on the evidence presented. Some contend they were just too chicken to rule on a death penalty case with only circumstantial evidence of guilt, however compelling. But then again, they weren’t in that jury box.

Others speculate about the hypothetical “CSI effect,” the notion that crime shows like CSI and its spin-offs have created unrealistic expectations about the power of forensic science to establish guilt beyond not just reasonable doubt, but all doubt.

I will just note it’s entirely possible to believe whole-heartedly that a person is guilty, and still not be able to vote guilty in good conscience. One of the more bizarre and uncomfortable experiences in my life was overhearing a man tell another how he murdered a friend at age 16, while they were out hunting together. I realized with horror that of course, with no witnesses to dispute this psychopath’s claim it was a hunting accident there was no way the jury could rightfully convict under our legal system’s rules of evidence. Hunting accidents do happen, and there was no arguable motive other than “he’s nuts.”

An acquitted criminal may admit their crime later – but there’s that double jeopardy thing in our Constitution.

I’m as uncomfortable as anyone else about the Anthony verdict – but I’m also glad our system takes Rabbi Moseh ben Maimon’s above-quoted commentary on the commandments seriously.

What I’m wondering now is, what if we had that legal option from Scottish law, the so-called “Scotch verdict”?

Scottish law has significant differences from English law in some cases. Under the laws of Scotland there are not two, but three possible verdicts in criminal cases. A legal precedent going back to at least 1728 provides for one verdict for conviction, and two for acquittal: not guilty, and not proven.

“Not proven” basically means the jury thinks the prosecution has not met the burden of proof, but they have strong doubts about the innocence of the accused. I don’t believe the option is used often and there is no difference in the outcome of the trial, the accused goes free.

As a practical matter, a number of not guilty verdicts are essentially informal Scotch verdicts, as in the Anthony case. I just wonder, what would happen if a jury were given the choice of making it official?

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I suppose it’s no secret I don’t have a very high opinion of national big-name journalism. In fact, I’m collecting examples for a book on the subject of how to do crummy writing and biased reporting.

There is a weird inversion of what you expect here. The best journalism is done at the community level, and it’s often very good indeed. The worst is done on the national newspaper/network level, and it’s often very bad.

One reason that has been pointed out is the ideological homogeneity of most big newsrooms. Most journalism is produced in environments which are further left-of-center than the national norm. The conservative counterbalance over at FOX news and conservative papers and magazines tends towards homogeneity as well, but it’s worthy of note that FOX actually does have self-identified liberals on staff.

(National Review Online also has an admirable diversity of views, and a list of links to stories expressing contrary views as well. For real diversity in opinion editorials you can go to Creators syndicate where they post editorials grouped under ‘liberal opinion’ and ‘conservative opinion.’ Treat yourself to some of each. I adore Lenore Skenazy.)

Another reason is, we’ve become Hypersensitive Nation. There are things we cannot say in public, without serious risk to our careers. Indeed there is a growing cottage industry of catching, recording, and publishing celebrities and politicians saying un-PC things in unguarded moments.

It was certainly bad in the Bad Old Days of kings and tyrants when you could step in it deep by saying things about the king or the church. But I have to wonder, is it any better now that there are a multitude of easily-offended “minority” groups who can hold you accountable, not for your actions but for your opinions – or even tentative speculations?

(I put “minority” in scare quotes, because it includes women, who were 51 percent of the population last I checked.)

The result is though we pride ourselves on being a free people with a free press, journalists lie a lot because they’re afraid.

Case in point, CNN broadcast journalist and opinion columnist Jane Velez-Mitchell.

Velez-Mitchell has an impassioned op-ed on the CNN website entitled, “11-year-old girl can’t be ‘willing’ in sex.”

It’s about an 11-year-old girl who last November was passed around like a bottle of liquor by possibly up to 28 young men between the ages of 14 to 28 – some of whom recorded the event on cell phone cameras.

If that isn’t bad enough, well here’s what she wrote in the lede.

“What’s more shocking than the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl? The fact that some people are actually blaming the little girl.”

The article goes on to report since there is video evidence that precludes a defense of “somebody else did it,” the defenders of the accused are falling back on “Plan B” – blame the victim.

As far as I can tell, every word of the article is true, and the speculations valid. And yet she lies.

There is NOT ONE WORD in the story that says the “divisions” in this town are black-brown! The victim is Hispanic, the accused are black.

Did Velez-Mitchell think these facts are irrelevant? Will she deign to notice them if that town explodes in a black-brown war? And yes, I know what saying this is going to get me called.

She sort of lets you in on this without actually saying it:

“First, an attorney for some of the suspects described the girl as someone who had a “desire to be a willing participant.” That was followed by the arrival in town of a Houston-based community activist named Quanell X who stood before a group of local parents and exclaimed, “It was not the young girl that yelled rape! Stop right there. Something is wrong brothers and sisters… Where was her mother? Where was her father? Where was her family?”"

That’s kind of a broad hint, “Quanell X” is not a typical Anglo-Saxon name, even in this age of trendy weirdness in names.

She continues:

“Perhaps more disturbing than his words were the murmurs of approval from the crowd. How about asking, “Where were the parents of the 14-year-old boy who is now accused of raping the 11-year-old girl?”"

And that crowd was composed of…?

Here’s a hint for Ms Velez-Mitchell: if that 14-year-old boy and the other boys and young men were representative of their demographic, there is a 70 percent chance there was no father at home. So that’s “mother,” not “parents.” And to answer your question, she’s in the crowd blaming the young girl.

Velez-Mitchell asks what kind of example we as a society are setting young boys?

I’d like to ask, what kind of example are you setting me Jane? You’re a big-time journalist and I’m strictly small-town small-fry. Aren’t you supposed to be setting an example for those of us who’d like to believe fearless pursuit of the truth will take you far?

Can’t any of you big names squirrel away some of the big bucks you’re making for a stash of drop dead money*?

As you can see from the bio, Velez-Mitchell is the daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and an Irish-American father. I think we can safely assume she uses her parents’ names hyphenated to get the minority career bump. Hell, over at FOX Julie Banderas, nee Julie Bidwell, does that. (The difference is, Banderas actually looks Hispanic. Velez-Mitchell looks less Hispanic than I do.)

She is also listed as “one of the few openly-gay journalists on television.” Oh puh-lease, that hasn’t been a career disability in years.

Velez-Mitchell is the author of the book, Secrets Can Be Murder: What America’s Most Sensational Crimes Tell Us About Ourselves.Wikipedia says the book “delves into the secrets unearthed in more than twenty of the most widely covered murder cases of recent times. The book’s premise is that, by studying the secrecy and deceit embedded in these tragic scenarios, we can learn to opt for honesty in our own lives and avoid similar outcomes.”

Oh yeah? I’d like to meet the courageous author of that book. You don’t by any chance know where I can find her do you?

Velez-Mitchell seems to think saying loudly that 11-year-old girls shouldn’t be raped and blamed for it, is an act of courage.

Don’t boast to me about your courage lady, this article shows you’re a coward, just like that ass US Attorney-General Holder said.

* “Drop dead money” is a phrase James Clavell used in his novel ‘Noble House.’ It means enough money, liquid and unencumbered to be able to tell anyone “drop dead” and walk away. I don’t have drop dead money, my security is a CDL – but I’d rather be a first-rate journalist than a mediocre truck driver.

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And a P.S. on AG Holder’s desire for an honest conversation on race.

I think it was in 1992 or ’93 I was attending a conference in then-Czechoslovakia, in a town called Swit (now Slovakia.)

There I met a delightful lady, South African author Frances Kendall.

Kendall had just published a book called, “The SeXY Factor: Gender differences at home and at work” about, as the title suggests, gender differences.

This was a bit of a daring subject, at a time when feminists were denying there were any differences in gender beyond basic plumbing.

Kendall told me that friends had told her, “This is great! Now why don’t you do one on race?”

Her answer, “No way! Everybody who touches that subject gets burned.”

Let’s have that conversation some other time.

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