Monthly Archives: August 2015

The unwanted child

Bobby

Bobby

What kind of life does an unwanted child have?

Years ago, I represented Bobby, 19, a red-headed boy, charged with killing a young Korean immigrant about his age, only two years older, in a Sterling dry cleaners in Loudoun County.

When Bobby was born, both his parents abandoned him at the hospital. His father had been discharged from the military because of his schizophrenia. So Bobby didn’t have a good start genetically either. His grandparents accepted him into their home but they kept Bobby in a closet and fed him like an animal. Bobby never walked quite right.

Bobby was finally adopted by a loving family in Loudoun, under another name, his background a secret to his parents. Bobby did well at school, wrestled on the team, had a job, and a girlfriend.

Bobby wrote an essay that he wished he had never been born, wished that his mother had an abortion.

He knew he was unwanted at birth – and for some time afterwards.

Bobby robbed the Sterling dry cleaners of $200 because he believed his girlfriend was pregnant – and he had this new responsibility – another unwanted child.

I fought to save Bobby from being executed when he didn’t want to be born in the first place. Bobby is alive, in custody, and eligible for parole.

Bobby’s story is not unique among unwanted children. Continue reading

In your Facebook

potbellypig

You’ve probably all noticed how, like the spreading tongues of flame, a fire of intolerant discontent burns off the reason of dissenters in Facebook (FB) groups with insulting in-your-face remarks, all too often for my taste, calling for intemperate action, unconcerned as to what the facts may be, or what ordinarily is considered right conduct.  Indeed, impetuous irresponsibility is the most obvious increasing characteristic of these FB group exchanges.

In my neighborhood, the greatest offender is “Lovettsville 20180.”

Amidst sensible posted discussions, someone strikes a match and we have an eruption of mostly macho trash talk threads that rival hunger strikes.

But the latest flare up comes from down Middleburg way – from a group named – “Middleburg Uncensored.”

It was about a sighting of two pigs.  Some say they’re pot-bellied pets.  Others insist they’re the scariest weightiest wild tusked boars that you’d ever care to imagine.

They were seen wandering in pastures.

One group wanted to approach the problem carefully:  “Save the pigs – and find the owner.”

But the gunpowder crowd knows what to do: “Kill the animals.”

This is a picture (above) of one of the terrifying “pig monsters,” courtesy Penny Loeb (copied and cropped – so you can better see the pig – from Penny’s FB post).

This is a pot bellied pig.  It’s a grass eater.  It’s eating grass.  Penny was a restraining voice of reason and caution, concerned to be deliberate in capturing these pigs.

But that was not to be the fate of one of these pigs. Continue reading

The little woman

The Donald

The Donald

We’re at high tide for Miss-ogyny in America and the poster child surfing this wave of sexist intolerance is “the Donald.”

Mr. Donald Trump is proud of the fact that he’s called women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals” and he admits that this abuse goes “well beyond” his slander slap fight with Rosie O’Donnell.

Confronted with his sexist locker room remarks about a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice by Fox Correspondent Megyn Kelly during last week’s presidential debate, the Donald said, “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.”

Yeah, what’s this “correctness” thing? Are you supposed to respect women? Who knew? As Governor Christy might say, “forgeddaboudid.”

The Donald said, “I don’t frankly have time for political correctness.”

Donald is, by his own words, all about “hav[ing] a good time.”

As for Ms. Kelly who asked the question, the Donald said, “And honestly Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be …”

“The Donald” then twitted the night away not being very nice to the correspondent including the remark– “I thought Megyn [Kelly] behaved very badly.”

The bullying woman-bashing Donald makes himself out to be the victim because Ms. Kelly “outed” what a pig the Donald truly is. Now that’s chutzpah.

But this is not just about “the Donald.” The dog whistle war waged by Republicans against women was never for the Donald. He puts it right out there, unabashedly, and, when he did last Thursday night, somewhere in America a guy sitting in a lounge chair, a tall beer at hand, dropped his half eaten bag of Doritos, and arm pumped a cheer, for the Donald for saying it “like it is” – that “this country doesn’t have time” to be politically correct, and certainly not about women. Continue reading

Take down those signs

blackKingSignsWestern Loudoun was and still is mostly a garden of delight. And other sections of the County have their special and distinctive charms.

I can’t say from observation what’s going on in the East but I suspect it’s about the same, as I’ve been told it is, especially along Sterling Boulevard.

In the West, I can tell you, the rolling green fields and three board horse fences are punctuated, awfully close to the road, with offensively large, in-your-face, self-adoring, political signs, at many turns in our local highways and dirt roads, the letters as tall as a small child, and thick in their indecent calligraphic display.

These monster signs have been posted by Republican pols who, for the most part, are characteristically comfortable with any development, almost no matter how it compromises or may ultimately destroy our marvelous countryside.

These signs are “the medium” for their “message.” (This is a nodding adaptation of Marshall McLuhan’s oft-quoted sentiment that – the “medium is the message.”

If President Reagan had a bipartisan sense of humor, he might say, “Take down those signs.”

As an old hand at this political business, I know that pols believe that 85% of a vote in an election is name recognition. So these signs don’t say anything but the candidate’s name and office.

I strongly suggest that you note the names on these signs and recoil from pulling the lever on any one of them – if you find their postings in as off-puttingly bad taste as I do.

We judge character by a person’s actions – and publishing these obnoxious larger than life, narcissistic nudges to our memory lobes, and leaving these monster signs out there as a persistent eyesore for months before the election, squatting on the good taste of the community, plainly suggests that these wannabe electables, view any objection to their signs, like Rhett Butler might in “Gone with the Wind” – “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”

Those hosting the signs no doubt make the lame protest – we can do what we want with our property, or with the consent of the property owner. Well, there really are some things one should not do. And maybe there should be a law about this – if the current freedom comes unrestrained by responsibility. Continue reading