ISSUE 19 - EDITORIAL

The world, this city not excluded, is becoming a crueler place. I’m not referring to gun control and bank robberies. I’m talking about person to person animosity and unnecessary psychological violence. It’s the new noise pollution, a health issue no one really addresses.
Between viewing American Idol for the first time this past week and my cantankerous and nasty old lady of a neighbor, I find I am becoming more agoraphobic every month. This is not meant to be a bitch session. I’m merely discussing the awareness of human cruelty on the most subtle level.
Years ago a friend noted the amount of psychological cruelty people thrust freely upon wait staff at restaurants because customers for the most part can get away with it, the customer being right as we all know.
Schadenfreud (a German phrase for taking pleasure in another person’s pain) is in full swing, more than ever. I watched Idol with disgust and frustration when watching the judges essentially torture contestants. It wasn’t enough to say “no thank you” the judges made very personal attacks. Remember the Gong Show? You might have sucked on that show but they didn’t go Sadam on the contestants. And is it necessary to make everyone “your bitch?” So you beat someone in a competition, be a damned sport about it.
And freaking shopping carts, people. Put the things in their corral in a parking lot. So many times I’ve seen them in empty parking and handicap spaces. I’ve watched someone unload bags and leave the cart, push it against another car or put it on a grassy median. And the corral is just a few feet away. How hard is it to walk the extra steps to place them in the corral? Think of the extra calories you’ll burn.
And in America we drive on the right side of the street. This goes for parking lots too. Yeah, I’m talking about you on that Vespa, or whatever that motorcycle wannabe thing was that you were driving. I almost hit you because you’re selfish.
And it’s been an active month for degenerate criminals. The 29 year old who posed as a 12 year old to be near young boys. And the man who held a boy captive for close to four years and kidnapped a boy just after getting off his school bus. It makes me think about, if I should ever have kids, about secretly putting a GPS tracking microchip in their scalp until they’re 18 so I can locate them should they get kidnapped. Of course there’s the down side to that. Your kid says they’re at a friends house but you find out they’re at a party and you show up to bust them.
And Hackers. Just pass a law to cut their hands off already. Have you nothing better to do than torment strangers? There’s a lot of porn on the Internet. Enjoy that and leave the rest of the world alone.
It seems as though there are parts of the movie Se7en that are painfully becoming true. Morgan Freeman’s narration hits the high mark just before the closing credits. Ernest Hemingway once wrote; the world is a fine place. And worth fighting for. I agree with the second part.

- Brian Tucker