Political Correctness...

I began to write a post on political correctness..but realized that Charleton Heston had already said it much better. This is taken (edited down a bit) from a speech he gave to the Harvard Law Forum on February 16, 1999.

"Dedicating the memorial at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln said of America,"We are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure." Those words are true again. I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that's about to hijack your birthright to think and say what resides in your heart. I fear you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you ... the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the miracle that it is.

"I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated. For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr.King in 1963 - long before Hollywood found it fashionable. But when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black pride or red pride or anyone else's pride, they called me a racist. I've worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life. But when I told an audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was called a homophobe. I served in World War II against the Axis powers. But during a speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out innocent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an anti-Semite. Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against my country. But when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural persecution, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh.

"From time to time, friends and colleagues, they're essentially friends from Time Magazine, say how dare you speak your mind. You are using language not authorized for public consumption!" But I am not afraid. If Americans believed in political correctness, we'd still be King George's boys - subjects bound to the British crown.

"For me, hyphenated identities are awkward ... particularly "Native-American." I'm a Native American, for God's sake. I also happen to be a blood-initiated brother of the Miniconjou Sioux. On my wife's side, my grandson is a thirteenth generation native American... with a capital letter on "American."

“Telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say , so telling us what to do can't be far behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America's campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who're supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression? Let's be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason. You are the best and the rightist. You, here in the fertile cradle of American academia, here in the castle of learning on the Charles River, you are the cream. But I submit that you, and your counterparts across the land, are the most socially conformed and politically silenced generation since Concord Bridge. And as long as you validate that and abide it ... you are - by your grandfathers' standards - cowards.

"Who will defend the core value of academia, if you supposed soldiers of free thought and expression lay down your arms and plead, "Don't shoot me." If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe. Don't let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism.

"But what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive social subjugation? The answer's been here all along. I learned it 36 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., standing with Dr. Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand people. You simply ... disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom. I learned the awesome power of disobedience from Dr. King ...who learned it from Gandhi, and Thoreau, and Jesus, and every other great man who led those in the right against those with the might.

"Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that disobedient spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Thoreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in Vietnam. In that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous laws that weaken personal freedom.

"But be careful ... it hurts. Disobedience demands that you put yourself at risk. Dr. King stood on lots of balconies. You must be willing to be humiliated ... to endure the modern-day equivalent of the police dogs at Montgomery and the water cannons at Selma. You must be willing to experience discomfort. I'm not complaining, but my own decades of social activism have taken their toll on me.

"Let me tell you a story. A few years back I heard about a rapper named Ice-T who was selling a CD called "Cop Killer" celebrating ambushing and murdering police officers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the world. Police across the country were outraged. Rightfully so-at least one had been murdered. But Time/Warner was stonewalling because the CD was a cash cow for them, and the media were tiptoeing around it because the rapper was black. I heard Time/Warner had a stockholders meeting scheduled in Beverly Hills. I owned some shares at the time, so I decided to attend. What I did there was against the advice of my family and colleagues. I asked for the floor. To a hushed room of a thousand average American stockholders, I simply read the full lyrics of "Cop Killer"- every vicious, vulgar, instructional word.

"I GOT MY 12 GAUGE SAWED OFF
I GOT MY HEADLIGHTS TURNED OFF
I'M ABOUT TO BUST SOME SHOTS OFF
I'M ABOUT TO DUST SOME COPS OFF..."

"It got worse, a lot worse. I won't read the rest of it to you. But trust me, the room was a sea of shocked, frozen, blanched faces. The Time/Warner executives squirmed in their chairs and stared at their shoes. They hated me for that. Then I delivered another volley of sick lyric brimming with racist filth, where Ice-T fantasizes about sodomizing two 12-year old nieces of Al and Tipper Gore.

"SHE PUSHED HER BUTT AGAINST MY ...."

Well, I won't do to you here what I did to them. Let's just say I left the room in echoing silence. When I read the lyrics to the waiting press corps, one of them said "We can't print that." "I know," I replied, "but Time/Warner's selling it." Two months later, Time/Warner terminated Ice-T's contract. I'll never be offered another film by Warner's, or get a good review from Time magazine. But disobedience means you must be willing to act, not just talk.

"When a mugger sues his elderly victim for defending herself ... jam the switchboard of the district attorney's office. When your university is pressured to lower standards until 80% of the students graduate with honors... choke the halls of the board of regents. When an 8-year-old boy pecks a girl's cheek on the playground and gets hauled into court for sexual harassment ... march on that school and block its doorways. When someone you elected is seduced by political power and betrays you...petition them, oust them, banish them. When Time magazine's cover portrays millennium nuts as deranged, crazy Christians holding a cross as it did last month ...boycott their magazine and the products it advertises.

"So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobedience's of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God's grace, built this country. If Dr. King were here, I think he would agree."

The Unexamined Life...

"The unexamined life is not worth living." --Socrates

What is an 'unexamined life'? I think it means that day-to-day, routinely repeating pattern of our lives: sleep, eat, work, eat, work, eat, sleep...repeat. All to often, we get caught up in our hectic lives that we fail to STOP and THINK. When we're young, all our choices are made for us.We're told what to wear, to eat, to learn, and to do. We get in that pattern of doing what we're told and never thinking for ourselves. When we're older, we make many more choices, yet we make these choices from a limited selection of options that our environment, our friends, our families, our employers, our teachers, or simply our habits present to us. Rarely, if ever, do we stop to reflect on what we truly want in life, on who we are and what we want to become, on what difference we want to make in the world, or on what is really right for us.

The price we pay for living an unexamined life, is precisely that, our lives. The real cost is the investment of all our energies in a direction thats not of our own choosing! Cervantes said, "Make it they business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world."

Let us each live a life worth living. Take a moment each day to ponder about YOU. Think of what you want, what you want to become, what is really right for you. If you think you're too busy or the cost is too great, think of the real cost your paying--your entire life. After all, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

He has not left that open to us...

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." --C.S. Lewis

Flaws

Flaws, we all have them. Some are more noticeable and worse than others. While some people may be arrogant or argumentative, others are dishonest or conceited. A few are perfectionists and some are stubborn. Where some are combative or selfish, others are humorless or vain. Not everyone has every flaw, but I'm pretty sure everyone has at least a couple. Too often we are overly critical of ourselves or we always see ourselves through rose-colored glasses. Either way we stick to the ends of the spectrum and get no where productive. A few years ago I was taught to always attempt to see others as their mother's see them...and my mom thinks I'm perfect, so you get the drift. Everyone on this earth is perfectly imperfect. We all have flaws. I want to try to learn to celebrate flaws, not judge them.

Secrets, secrets are no fun. Secrets, secrets hurt someone...

**I originally wrote this post back in August, but never posted it. In light of Tiger Woods' recent struggles with the media, I've decided it is again relevant*

What makes any sex/money/politics/family/religious scandle ten times worse? A failed cover-up... Everyone loves a good cover-up right? Just ask Bill Clinton how much a cover up really works? Or Richard Nixon if you need a second opinion. And if you're still not sure, ask the Catholic Church if any sort of cover-up worked out for them. A failed cover-up only adds fuel to the fire and headlines to the news.

How many times have you promised not to tell a soul, heard a story and then turned right around and told someone else? (I know what you're thinking..."But I made them promise not to tell anyone, so I'm ok.") Its a social disease and everyone has it, NO ONE CAN KEEP A SECRET. We've all done it and I'm just as guilty. You hear a juicy, tantalizing story about someone and you just have to tell someone. I don't write this post because someone betrayed my secret trust, quite the contrary. For some reason people feel drawn to tell me their secrets. Sometimes people don't tell me their secrets and then think I don't know, but really someone already told me the secret. Confused yet? Basically, I know your secret. I contemplated making a list of all the super awesome secrets I know about people. I'm sure to get a few more readers, but a lot less friends. So your secret is safe with me...for now.

Don't take pity on me...

Life can be rough. I've been sick for the last month with a cold and then the H1N1 flu. I wrecked my car. I can't find a job...blah blah blah. Sadly, I even went as far to say, "I feel like Job" as a Facebook status. How pathetic am I? So I kinda thew together this little poem...I can't even remember the last time I wrote a poem.

Don't take pity on me.

Empathize for the sick and the dying who's days are marked.

Give solace to the soldiers who risk their lives for freedom.

Have mercy for those who wilt away in prisons for crimes long ago.

Don't take pity on me.

Pray for the starving children who awake and sleep each day with pangs of hunger.

Feel compassion for the homeless who sleep on cold concrete and search for shelter.

Have charity for those downtrodden who have no one to love.

Don't take pity on me.

I have my health.

I have my freedom.

I have my future.

Don't take pity on me.

I have my subsistence.

I have my home.

I have my family.

Don't take pity on me.

Cheating...

As most of you know, for the last two years I’ve been a substitute teacher. I don’t do it a whole lot, but its always an adventure when I do. If I were smarter, I would’ve written down all my funny and memorable experiences…but I didn’t. But yesterday, I got a good one…

I was subbing a high school English class. The students were taking a vocabulary quiz using a scantron. I’m at my desk, minding my own business, when I see out of the corner of my eye, some girl slyly slide the test and scantron into her notebook. I’ve seen this move before. I call it the “switch-n-sneak.” Here’s how the rouse works: Students take the test home, complete it, then sneak it back into the classroom. Maybe they’ll put it in the basket or hide it among papers on the teacher’s desk. All in the hope that the teacher thinks they’ve simply overlooked it among all the other papers they have. It’s a solid move when executed correctly. But sadly, this girl doesn’t understand how to play the game. She was WAY TOO sneaky and I caught on. I saw her do it…but decided to see what her plan was. So I wait until ‘everyone’ is done and count up the exams. Of course, I’m one short. So I play the idiot and ask, “Who isn’t done yet?” No one responds… “Ok, so I’m an exam short. Did someone not take it?” Silence…but I decide to wait this one out and let the guilt eat her alive. After about 30 seconds of awkward silence she says, “Oh, I was gone last time so I didn’t take it.” Again, playing the part of the idiot I say, “Oh. That makes sense. So did I give you the exam and scantron?” She, thinking she’s in the clear, says, “Nope. I just didn’t take one.” It crossed my mind to cause a major scene and jump up on my desk, scream “YOU LIE!”, grab the notebook from her desk and parade it around…but I declined. I let her think she had gotten away with it for a few more minutes. When the class had moved on to other things, I sat down in the desk next to her, smiled and said, “Ya…so I saw you sneak the test into your notebook. Lets not cause a scene, so how about you just give it back to me and we move on?” She got a wide eyed look on her face and then accepted my pardon by handing over the exam. Hopefully she learned a valuable lesson on lying, but I doubt it. She’ll probably just refine her game for next time.

Some students walk into a class I’m substitute teaching in and automatically assume I’m an idiot. I know from experience that some subs are idiots…I just try not to think of myself as one. They probably think they can get away with their little tricks and games. Most of them don’t realize that I was in high school not so long ago and I learned those tricks and games and substitute teaching has only refined my skills. The “switch-n-sneak” was in play long before this girl attempted it and it’ll be here long after. I know of tricks she hasn’t even dreamed of. I’ve heard of all the tricks, seen some in action and even practiced a few. This are some of the tricks I’ve encountered in one way or another:

• “The Sneak-n-switch”: cousin of the “switch-n-sneak.” It works in almost the opposite way. You somehow get a hold of the test before hand and sneak in your answers. Say you have an in-class essay. You write the essay beforehand, in the comfort of your home, and then simply turn that one in.

• “The Informant” or “The Accomplice”: where you have a friend who has the class before you and can relay information to you. They take the test, then relay information to you that you use when you take the test. This works best if the principle of reciprocity works: you need to have class before them somewhere in your schedule so you can return the favor.

• “The Morse Code”: This one is elaborate. You and a friend in the same class devise a system of sharing answers using a series of signals or taps on the desk. You tap out the number in question and then have a system taps to indicate the answers; A=1 tap, B=2 taps, etc. This one is tricky and can’t be used often.

• “The Hall Pass”: In this case, you store valuable information in you locker. Get stuck on a question, use the hall pass, find said answer. Again, this is a one-time deal. Unless you have a 44 oz. Mountain Dew on your desk…then maybe you can get away with two trips.

• “The Technology”: This one involves the sophisticated use of technology. Most teachers will let students listen to an iPod while taking a test. Classical music is always good to get the brain firing, right? Well, what if that “Classical Music: Track 1” is actually a series of recorded notes? Don’t laugh, I’ve seen it in action.

• “The Old School”: This is where you writes on some portion of your body, ie. Your hand, arm, ankle, etc. Or writing notes on a pencil, the brim of your hat, tongue of your shoe, etc. Again, these techniques are old school to the core.

• “The Pre-emptive Strike”: This is where you miss the class the day before the exam. Hence, most likely granting yourself one more day of study time and probably allowing you to use the “Informant” technique.

• “The Excuse”: “My computer wouldn't print off. I sent you the e-mail did you not get it? My boyfriend's uncle died. I don't know how to work Blackboard. I did the assignment but it deleted itself while I was trying to print it off. I'm just having some real serious personal issues right now that are too hard to talk about...” You get the idea…

Now, I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I cheated my way through school, I didn’t. Although, I’ll be the first to admit that I have cheated on occasion but I think everyone has at one time or another. We’ve all, in a moment of weakness, looked over at our neighbor’s paper or asked a friend what was on the exam. Some people are better at it than others. Thats the sad thing. If that girl had an ounce of "game" she would've gotten away with it. She was a rookie...