“That stupid blockhead of a brother of mine is out in the pumpkin patch making his yearly fool of himself.”

Friends:

I am a product of the public school system as I am sure many of you are and I am still a huge proponent of it.  When many of my contemporaries were choosing to enroll their children in private schools, my wife and I moved out to Valencia specifically to take advantage of the tremendous public school system up here. 

But don’t be fooled.  Even though it is the public school system, it is an industry and, I am afraid to say it, they are putting themselves out of business. 

Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, I was a ward of the Los Angeles Unified School District and subject to one of the largest unions in the city, the UTLA (United Teachers Los Angeles).  This is what I knew of the UTLA:  They allowed the teachers to strike when they were upset.

As a young kid, the teachers’ issues of compensation, benefits, and union activity is as foreign as the lost language of Aramaic.  They certainly meant nothing to me.  So even though I heard that the teachers were not happy and that they were going to strike, I interpreted that as selfishness.  Wasn’t my education more important than…?

When my wife and I were looking to move our home in anticipation of starting a family, we looked in areas that were, admittedly, outside of the LAUSD.  This wasn’t specifically a snubbing of the school district that gave me so much, but was a statement that it was just too big, too unwieldy, and more importantly, too “political.”  These characterizations, though, were still powerful in me 20 years after I departed its programs.

I have said it before and I will say it again and again and again:  we as a society downplay or downright ignore the impact that our actions will have on our children.  Whether it’s allowing more and more violence on television, loosening the restrictions on inappropriate language in the media, or venerating the sex-symbol teenyboppers, we do not think how children will see all of this.

This is why it is so very important that we show them how important they are, that we consider the impact our actions and conduct will have on the succeeding generations.

And it starts with our schools.

Yeah yeah yeah, Rob, you’ve said it before.  But you’re going to want to listen to this one.  Because now, my ire and fury is not focused on the teachers or the unions, but on the school district itself and its board of governors. 

So to the Saugus Union School District, the superintendent, the governor, and whoever else has determined that public school education is not important, I say this:  SHAME ON YOU!!!

You have determined that our money, that the taxpayers’ money, would be better spent on extra assistants for you and for who knows what else, instead of using that money for its necessary purposes, like teachers and materials and art and music programs. 

My friends, the word has come down from on high that teachers will be losing their jobs and that class sizes will be increasing.  All budgetary issues, for sure, but of budgetary issues my children know not.  Consider the way Charlie Brown’s parents (and teachers – ha!) speak and that is what children will hear when they see their favorite teachers being fired, their desks being pushed closer together to get more into the classroom, and their art and music programs being taken away.  They won’t hear, “There isn’t enough money.”  They won’t hear, “The legislature hasn’t allocated enough money for public education.”  And they certainly won’t hear, “This hurts us more than it hurts you.”

No, instead this is what they hear:

“You aren’t important enough to us to figure another way and we do not think that your education is as important as some of the other things we can do with the money.”

We as a society fail to consider how our children will interpret our actions.  And now it seems that those with whom we entrust our children are the biggest offenders.

Shame on you!

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“Well, you don’t look like a bodyguard.”

Friends:

 

I am sick and tired of the world and TMZ/Entertainment Tonight/Extra, etc and the gossip rags taking gleeful joy in a celebrity’s train-wreck of a life, only to act surprised and shattered when they die prematurely.  Whitney Houston?  Ryan Dunn (of “Jackass” fame)?  Lindsay Lohan (ok, not dead yet, but coming?)

When Ryan Dunn died last June from a car accident caused by his driving at excessive speeds while intoxicated, his friends, family, and fans, showered the Jackass world with an outpouring of support and sadness.  His co-stars and best friends were distraught, inconsolable, and desolate.  It was heart wrenching watching these guys who basically pulverize their bodies for laughs break down and sob like little kids.

But while it is never funny for someone to die, let alone at a young age, his death was virtually foretold.  In fact, his friends had frequently commented that since he loved driving so fast he was one day going to kill himself.  But did his friends and family do anything about it?  Did they try to warn him off, express to him how devastated they would be if he died, perhaps suggest that he drive maybe a little slower?  And wasn’t it a few years earlier, in the exact same spot, that Ryan Dunn had had a similar type accident?

Twenty years ago, if you have told me that Whitney Houston was going to die at age 48 of causes likely associated with alcohol and drug abuse, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least.  If it was obvious to me, then it had to be obvious to everyone else, right?  Yet over the past 20 years, instead of her fans and the media appealing to her to get help, to right her life and get back on track, we watched with amusement as her life spiraled out of control, just another celebrity who partied too hard, lived the life of sex, drugs and rock and roll, and went by the way of Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. 

Seriously, don’t we all take a little bit of joy in the trials and travails of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears?  We see them as privileged starlets, trying to live the Hollywood lifestyle only to come crashing down in flames in front of our eyes, and we flock to it.  TMZ and other websites and “news outlets” of that ilk have created a society in which the self-destruction of celebrities is must watch TV.  Because they are celebrities, with their lives always on stage, it is ok for us to revel in their hardships.  Because they have money.  Because they have fame.  Because we put them on a pedestal and think that they are better than we are.

You know the adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity?  That’s what this is!  Our thirst for gossip about celebrities has created an environment in which they don’t need to remedy their ills, they don’t need to change or get better.  Without their bad publicity, some of them would have none and then where would they be?  Celebrities are a different breed from other people.  By the time they become rich and famous they have been told so many times how great they are, how special they are, how exceptional they are, that many of them need that constant reaffirmation of how special they are.  So the idea of not being in the public eye, of not being followed by cameras, is tantamount to being anonymous.

We as a society, by gawking at their ordeals, reinforce the negative behavior.  If they are on the cover of all of the magazines and are the lead stories on the talk shows because of their run ins with the law, or trips back to rehab, or embarrassing behavior due to substance abuse, and the alternative is a straight life with no publicity, the choice is an easy one.

I don’t mean to be cynical and I know that substance abuse is a disease that many find incredibly difficult to overcome, but wouldn’t their efforts be more likely to succeed if we support them in that, instead of glamorizing their problems?

Here is a perfect example:  anyone know what’s going on with Paris Hilton?  She seems to be flying under the paparazzi radar, what with her not getting arrested for driving under the influence, not having publicly embarrassing episodes, and not going to jail.  Thus, no publicity.

We have created the beast and then we act shocked and saddened when our idols succumb to the very disease we have glamorized.  We call their falls from grace tragedies.  We also have responsibility. 

So I am sorry.  I feel no sadness for Whitney Houston or Ryan Dunn or Michael Jackson or Lindsay Lohan.  I feel only outrage for the rest of the world that holds vigils and gives tributes.  Don’t wait until they are dead to espouse the ills of their abuses.  Don’t reinforce the bad behavior by gawking about it and making it front page news.  How do you stop a bully?  Ignore it and act like it doesn’t bother you.  How do you stop outrageous behavior?  Stop glamorizing it.  Take a stance that this type of behavior will land the celebrity in the worst place imaginable.  No, not a coffin… worse.  Obscurity.

Chuck Chuck Bo Buck, Banana Fana Fo… Happy Birthday!

Friends:

 

In case you were not aware, it is Charles Dickens’ 200^th birthday this week and as you no doubt know, I am celebrating.  Of course, I like so many other teenagers saw Dickens as a punishment, some cruel way that the educational system was sticking it to us, forcing us to read this boring, slogging, difficult English writing that was in no way enjoyable or educational.  You know that my tune has changed… and here is why.

Sure, Dickens wrote long books, books with many characters, books about times to which we in the 21^st century cannot relate.  But he also wrote about adolescence, which is wasted on the young.  Unfortunately, so is Dickens.  He MUST be read by adults, as a remider of their past…

There was a time when we didn’t know any better, when things were so much simpler.  We had an innocence and a purity which we have never been able to recapture.  It is a shame that youth is wasted on the young.

When we are young, we don’t know about crime or disease or war.  We don’t know about things that go bump in the night or terrorism.  Pirates only exist in Neverland.  We have an outlook on life and the world which is nice and tidy.  The princess always wakes up, the bad guys always look cartoonishly scary and obvious, and mommy and daddy always tuck you in when you go to sleep.  

But real life, the life of the grown up, is nothing like that.  It may be a question of what came first, the chicken or the egg, but at some point we leave childhood and the blissful naivete that lives there and enter the world of reality television, terror in the skies and tragedy.  Bambi’s mother died, but far off-screen– in real life we don’t have the luxury of averting our eyes or hiding under the sheets, believing that when we look back, all will be well again.

Of course, we all know that some children don’t have the luxury of living in oblivion, they can’t simply bury their head in their mother’s shoulders until the evil sorcerer leaves the screen.  They are forced to accept reality at an early age and have to decide how such reality will shape their future.  Will they struggle against reality and maintain their virtuousness as long as possible, or will they prematurely jump into adulthood despite their persistent immaturity?  For every story of a young girl who finds her way to success despite the turmoil and misfortune of a poor childhood, there are 10 more that result in crime or death or persistent pain. 

Think about the more notable novels of Dickens.  Did you think of “Oliver Twist” and “Great Expectations?”  Maybe “David Copperfield?”  Notice anything similar about those books, the most popular of Dickens’?  They all depict the life experiences of the young.  Child characters who view the world from a three-foot vantage point, staring up at the human race with mouths agape.  Even the illustrations which accompanied the serialized novels when first published depict the “heroes” as tiny creatures in a sea of giants.

And yet, despite the tragedies and challenges they face, the evil and treachery that they experience, they find a way to maintain their innocence, to maintain a view of life as having been un-foretold.  They start out in the bleakest of circumstances, but through virtue and decency, they overcome their plight.  Sure they don’t do it alone; of course they have help along the way.  But it is their character that attracts such wonderful people, benefactors, who help out.  Neither Oliver nor Pip nor Davy ever seems to say a cross word or act out in frustration; it isn’t their nature.  They are kids who don’t know better; Oliver doesn’t realize that Fagin is villainous and David doesn’t see that Steerforth is a bully.

Our kids have that same ability.  You can call it gullibility or susceptibility, but I call it paradise.  Wouldn’t it be nice to return to a time when the world was small, when all we knew was right outside our window?  Where being good and living right meant safety and eventual happiness?  Who wants to really live the life of the tragedian, where everything is gloomy and the sky is always cloudy and dark?

We can be that way again.  It takes work, but if we teach our kids that they don’t have to change, that bullies get their due in the end (always!) and that the good guys always win, wouldn’t that create a society of happiness?  Wouldn’t it make life more fulfilling?  Reading the stories of these young heroes is a sobering but heartwarming experience.  There is a certain amount of joy that one takes from living the growing up process all over again and seeing it through the eyes of the pure.  However that pleasure is tempered by the 11 o’clock news.

It is incredibly easy to understand why Dickens wrote so many wonderful stories about children…  It is the ultimate escape from reality– more fantastic than fantasy.  It returned him and his readers to simplicity, to innocence, to pleasure.  A pleasure which, sadly and “real” enough, we can never recapture.