A Short Examination and History of The Second Amendment

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
-U.S. CONST. amend. II.

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution is made up of 27 small and simple words, so it would be easy to assume that its meaning and interpretation would also be simple. That would be a mistake. The Second Amendment, its meaning and origin, has evolved over time and taken on, rightly or wrongly, new and different interpretations to different people, but where did this amendment come from, why did the Framers include it in the document that would help define the identity of the new American Nation, and what does it mean today?
One long standing impediment to a better understanding of the Second Amendment is the general tendency for legal scholars and historians to gloss over or, in some cases, to completely avoid a direct analysis of the Second Amendment, treating it as the “equivalent of an embarrassing relative, whose mention brings a quick change of subject to other, more respectable, family members” (Levinson, 1989). There are, perhaps, several reasons for this avoidance, ranging from the deliberate dodging of the politically charged issue of gun control legislation to the conspicuously absent attention historically paid to this amendment by the United States Supreme Court.
Overall scrutiny of this amendment, however, can be delineated into two, seemingly, mutually exclusive interpretations; the first is that “the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a firearm, and…[the second] that it merely guarantees the right of the states to maintain militias, and thus does not guarantee an individual right” (Oder, 1998). These interpretations rely on the separation of the clauses of the text since “[w]hat is special about the [Second] Amendment is the inclusion of an opening clause…that seems to set out its purpose” (Levinson, 1989). This amendment “is one of only two provisions of the Constitution that contains its own preamble, and this raises a question of the extent to which this statement of purpose should guide the interpretation” (Rakove, 2002).
This makes it difficult to clearly interpret the meaning of this amendment because “legal analysts who wish to limit the Second Amendment's force…focus on its "preamble" as setting out a restrictive purpose” (Levinson, 1989), namely that the right to own a gun is dependent on membership in a state militia, and this guarantees only a collective right. Because the foremost, and only (until recently), direct Supreme Court opinion relating to the Second Amendment, United States v. Miller, (307 U.S. 174, 1939) “strongly suggested that no right to possess a firearm exists outside of a well-regulated Militia” (District of Columbia v. Heller, 2008), this interpretation of the amendment has gained a strong hold over general public opinion and has been used as the basis for popular and restrictive firearm legislation (Levinson, 1989).
Furthermore, proponents of the collective right position assert that this amendment also “protected against domestic insurrection” (Cress, 1984) in that it can be read to prohibit the ownership of firearms by people not belonging to those who are duly authorized by the state to put down such uprisings (Cress, 1984); In other words, “[i]t did not guarantee the right of individuals, like Daniel Shays and his followers, to closet armaments” (Cress, 1984), but ensured against such insurgents from possessing them. In addition, supporters of this view interpret the term “the people” in the operative clause as a collective term (Cress, 1984); to support this they turn to state constitutions, many of which “use the words "man" or "person" in regard to "individual rights…[but use] the term "the people"…to refer to the "sovereign citizenry" collectively organized” (Levinson, 1989).
This view suggests that the Framers intended the role of “well regulated militia” to be the duty of every citizen. Consider the martial connotation of the term “bear”, as in “to bear arms” in the operative clause; Since the Second Amendment, taken in this context, seems to merge the concept of the militia with both the right to keep and bear arms, it has been suggested (Cress, 1984) that “citizenship…was defined in part by militia service…not an insistence on individual prerogative” (Cress, 1984).
Opponents of this interpretation, however, hearken back to the Florentine tradition “articulated most clearly by Niccolo Machiavelli, [who] idealized the citizen-warrior as the staunchest bulwark of a republic” (Shalhope, 1982), suggesting that the Framers intent was to preserve the individual right to keep and bear arms in order to secure the framework for a lasting republic. Arguments from this side point to a clear division of the clauses as ensuring two separate and distinct rights, drawing as evidence on the clearer “usage of the term “the people” in the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments” to refer to the protection of the individual right to keep arms (Levinson, 1989).
Furthermore, they, too, turn to the constitutions of the states, such as those of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New York, to show that each of these clearly established, as an individual right, the right to keep and bear arms, separate from the right of the state to have and control their own militias (Shalhope, 1982). For those in this camp, the Second Amendment secures the individual’s right to keep and bear arms as a bulwark against the possible tyranny of federal authority “since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary powers of rulers” (Story, 1833, cited in Shalhope, 1982).
Both of these viewpoints rely on differing interpretations of events and ideologies of the eighteenth century, and both draw differing conclusions from similar philosophical and historical influence on the Framers. The conflict between these views remained unresolved, chiefly because, for many on each side of the argument, the political ramifications of this amendment reach far into the courts and the lives of Americans today and, for some, it is difficult to divorce their research from their own personal agendas and opinions (Shalhope, 1982). History, however, remains intact regardless of how it is interpreted, therefore in order to begin to completely understand the full meaning of this amendment, it is first important to understand the historical context in which it was drafted.
The Framers did not create the Constitution or the Bill of Rights “within a vacuum” (Shalhope, 1982); they were deeply influenced by the political theories of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and other Enlightenment thinkers (O’Conner & Sabato, 2008); they drew on these, and various other social and political philosophies to devise a frame of thought that has come to be described as “republicanism” (Shalhope, 1982). In this way of thought “a republic’s very existence depended upon the character and spirit of its citizens” (Shalhope, 1982), and “survived only through the constant protection of the realm of Liberty from the ceaselessly aggressive forces of Power” (Shalhope, 1982).
That the Framers were aware of the necessity to safeguard against the possibility of tyranny from within the government is easily evident in the complex system of checks and balances that they established for the new nation (O’Conner & Sabato, 2008), thus insuring against the possibility of one section of the government growing more powerful than any other. It was important for these early Americans that the authority of the government reside with the citizens. This makes it “essential…to understand the place of the armed citizen in libertarian thought and the manner in which this theme became an integral part of American republicanism” (Shalhope, 1982) .
When James Madison drafted the amendments to the Constitution, he did so out of a dire necessity to achieve a compromise among the states, in order to assure consensus on ratification (Higginbothom, 1998). The origin of the Second Amendment can be traced to the tempestuous and passionate debates surrounding the achievement of this accord among the states, and from the events that shaped the lives of those who offered suggestions and opinions on how these amendments would be shaped.
For example, much examination has gone into the events surrounding the creation of the U.S. Constitution and those directly preceding it in order to understand what kind of nation that the Framers were trying to create. Most of this study has centered on events related to the American Revolution and have completely ignored the legacy of the Colonial Wars, such as the French and Indian War. The reason that these prior conflicts should be considered is because of the extensive use of colonial militias by the British in their struggle against French, and the impact this may have had on the Framers views of “a well regulated militia”.
“Throughout the seventy years of conflict”, writes military historian Howard H. Peckham, “England never solved the primary problem of America’s indifference to military service” (1964). Again and again, throughout the Colonial Wars, and even during the American Revolution, colonial militias failed to achieve success as well as regulars (Peckham, 1964); more significantly, however, was that, even when their homes and territory were directly threatened by French encroachment, Americans remained wholly ambivalent toward military service of any kind (Peckham, 1964).
The mutually exclusive dichotomy of the idealized militia, held by so many states’ leaders during the ratification debates, and the dismal reality of the militia, displayed in actual historical events, shows that the Framers had many great and noble ideals, but that “the revolutionary generation redefined its experiences and made them as virtuous and as heroic as they ought to have been” (Shalhope & Cress, 1984). ‘This impulse”, writes Shalhope (1984), “helps to explain the exaggerated significance accorded the militia by Americans in the 1780’s”, and better illustrates the “environment filled with hyperbolic praise of the militia” (Shalhope, 1984), during the drafting of the Bill of Rights, and Congressional subsequent debates.
Much emphasis is placed on the fact that “colonial and Revolutionary Americans were virtually of one mind in espousing a well-regulated militia under local authority“ (Higgenbotham, 1998) for defense, and aggressively shunned the establishment of a standing, peacetime military force under federal control. The fear that such a force could be used as an instrument of oppression is reflected in the text of several states’ bill of rights and constitutions, which affirm, in one form or another, that standing armies are “dangerous to liberty” in times of peace and “should not be kept.” Furthermore, within these separate state documents, the right of individuals to keep and bear arms is solidly espoused, as separate and distinct from articles relating to militias (Shalhope, 1982).
Security of the nation, then, should be the domain of militias and, as many anti-federalists argued, these militias should be controlled by the individual states. The trouble with this was that Federalists were concerned that “they [the states] would not provide the resources required to maintain readiness” (Rakove, 2002). To address this, Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution was drafted to help to ensure that “its [the militias] establishment, exercise, and weapons would be uniform in all the states” (Higgenbotham, 1998), however there is “no authorization for the central government under any circumstance to assemble for training or any other reason even some small part of the state militias” (Higgenbotham, 1998). The individual right to keep arms, it seems, was regarded as a distinct liberty, completely detached from any connection to service in a militia, or service to the government, whatsoever, as no mention of it is made.
The suggestion that James Madison drafted the Second Amendment to ensure a collective right to bear arms solely to those belonging to the militia, then, would seem, at best a form of well intentioned naïveté or, at worst, the intentional subversion of an individual right for the benefit of political and legislative gain. Moreover, it becomes clearer that the researcher need not be wholly versed in Colonial or legal history, or even Revolutionary ideology to better understand the original meaning of the Second Amendment, but must be at least somewhat familiar with what James Madison himself intended.
“Madison and his colleagues on the select committee…were anxious to capture the essence of the rights demanded by so many Americans in so many different forms” (Shalhope, 1982); to this end they were forced to consolidate and reword many of these suggested changes (Shalhope, 1982). The original wording of this amendment, according to “Madison’s original suggestion reads: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person” (Dumbauld, E. 1979, cited in Shalhope, 1982). This wording makes it very clear that the meaning of the Second Amendment was “to protect two separate rights: the individual’s right to possess arms and the right of the states to form their own militia” and not “to subordinate one right to the other nor to have one clause serve as subordinate to the other” (Shalhope, 1989).
The text, as it was put forth to Congress, was altered slightly, to read: “ A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms”. Shalhope illustrates (p. 610) that the debate that followed the presenting of what was then the third clause of the second proposition in Congress centered mostly on the phrase “scrupulous of bearing arms”. According to The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, (1 Cong., 1 sess., Aug. 17, 1789, p. 778) the representative from Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, worried that “this clause would give an opportunity to the people in power to destroy the constitution itself ” by giving them the power to “declare who are those religiously scrupulous and prevent them from bearing arms”, (cited in Shalhope, 1982). A lively debate is recorded that shows that other representatives were more concerned with matters such as to whom exactly the phrase “scrupulous of bearing arms” referred, that no one sect should be singled out, and that, perhaps, it should be made clear that “paying an equivalent” instead of serving themselves would later “be established by law”. The entire amendment was considered by Rep. Gerry “a declaration of rights…intended to secure the people against the mal-administration of the government” which “if…in all cases, the rights of the people would be attended to, the occasion for guards of this kind would be removed” ( 1 Cong., 1 sess., Aug. 17, 1789, p. 778). Not a word is recorded in that debate that either denies or supports the individual right to keep and bear arms, but it could be inferred from this silence that such a right existed as a safeguard against the future possibility of the government becoming a threat to the liberty of the citizens, and did not even require questioning.
In late 2008 the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, which opened the gate on tidal wave of historical, textual, and legal analysis of the Second Amendment provided as amici curiae briefs in support of each side. While the question at hand involved the constitutionality of specific city codes, the greater debate centered, once again, on the individual versus collective right to bear arms, with much textual, historical, and legal evidence in support of each side. Of these, one of the most sweeping is the brief for the State of Texas, et. al. in which the attorney generals of 31 states stood together to protect the right of the citizens of their states to keep and bear arms. “An individual right” this brief asserts, “that can be altogether abrogated is no right at all.”
On June 26th 2008, the Court offered a 4-5 split opinion, with Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority: "Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security and where gun violence is a serious problem” he wrote, addressing the issue of the amendments militia clause. “That is” he continued ”perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct." (District of Columbia v. Heller, 2008). Most importantly the Court affirmed the “individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation” (District of Columbia v. Heller 2008). “This meaning” wrote Justice Scalia, “is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment…codified a pre-existing right,” (District of Columbia v. Heller 2008).
The debate over, and search for clarity about, the Second Amendment will, no doubt, continue in the lower courts; questions concerning the proper restrictions and limitations on the individual right to bear arms will, no doubt, linger into the coming decades. In short, the examination of the Second Amendment is far from over. Nevertheless, the Heller decision has helped to at least establish a strong basis from which to begin that work, and it is “most notable for…its complete and unanimous rejection of the “collective rights” interpretation” (Reynolds & Denning, 2008). Perhaps now genuine progress can be made towards building strong legislation which protects, not only people’s rights, but their lives.


References
Cress, L.D. (June, 1984). An Armed Community: The Origins and Meaning of the Right to Bear Arms. The Journal of American History, 71(1), p. 22-42. Retrieved from JSTOR Database April 12, 2009. Document ID: 1899832.

District of Columbia et. al.. v. Heller. 554 U.S. ___ (2008). Retrieved April 3, 2009 from http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/07-2901.pdf.

Higgenbotham, D. (January, 1998). The Federalized Militia Debate: A Neglected Aspect of Second Amendment Scholarship. The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 55(1), p. 39-58. Retrieved from JSTOR Database April 11, 2009. Document ID: 2674322.

Levinson, S. (December,1989). The Embarrassing Second Amendment. The Yale Law Journal, 99(3), p.637-659. Retrieved from JSTOR April 13, 2009. Document ID: 796759.

O’Connor, K. & Sabato, L. J. (2008) American government: continuity and change (9th ed.). NewYork: Pearson Education.

Oder, B.N. (1998). Teaching the Meaning of the Second Amendment: A brief note on recent research. Magazine of History, 13(1), p.64. Retrieved from ProQuest April 20, 2009.

Peckham, H.H, (1964). The Colonial Wars: 1689 – 1762. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Rakove, J.N. (January, 2002). Words, Deeds, and Guns: "Arming America" and the Second Amendment. The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 59(1), p.205-210. Retrieved From JSTOR Database April 11, 2009. Document ID: 3491652.

Reynolds, G.H. & Brannon, D.P. (2008). Heller’s Future in the Lower Courts. Northwestern University Law Review, 102(4), p. 2035. Retrieved from ProQuest April 22, 2009.

Shalhope, R.E. (December, 1982) The Ideological Origins of the Second Amendment. The Journal of American History. 69(3), p.599-614. Retrieved April 12, 2009 from JSTOR Database.

Shalhope, R.E. & Cress, L.D. (December, 1984) The Second Amendment and the Right to Bear Arms: An Exchange. The Journal of American History,. 71(3), p. 587-593. Retrieved from JSTOR Database April 12, 2009. Document ID: 188743.

The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, (1 Cong., 1 sess., Aug. 17, 1789, p. 778) , retrieved April 25 from http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=001/llac001.db&recNum=390

Dark Days

Well it’s official. The NBA is rigged, George W. Bush is surrounded by yellow-dog turn coats, and the Angel of Weird still smiles in Denver. I was sitting on Tuesday night, trying to drink off a nasty funk as everyone in town cursed the day that Joey Crawford was born, when I took a call from a friend in another State.
“What about that last play?” he asked, sure that I would launch into an angry diatribe.
“What about it?” I said. “Barry was off and the Spurs lost it…End of Story.”
“But it was clearly a foul!” he screamed into the phone. “Fisher smacked Barry on the head intentionally. Barry was on fire all night long, that shot was meant to go in!”
“Barry dribbled and finished the play,“ I reminded him. “It was a good no call.”
“The hell you say! If nothing else Barry deserved a floor call, it was so clearly a foul. They could have tied the game, gone into overtime.”
“What? So Ginobili, Parker and Duncan could go on missing shots for another five minutes and hand us an even worse loss? You sadistic swine, what kind of Fan are you?”
“It was Crawford’s fault,” he whined. “Joey Crawford has it in for the Spurs!”
In fact, the entire city on Wednesday seemed to echo that same sentiment, openly reviling a respected member of the NBA Referee establishment in every local newscast, and on every street corner.
“If I were [Crawford] I wouldn’t start my own car for the next few weeks” offered one critic. Others were not so nice or nearly as subtle. But let us draw the curtain on that brand of ugliness and face up to facts. David Stern and the rest of the League would much prefer to have a Lakers/Celtics Finals in order to hoist up their faltering ratings. The NBA never did entirely recover from the lock out in ’99, and viewership has been regulated to die-hard fans and sad, sick holdouts like me who would like to have seen the Spurs go back to back at least once before Tim Duncan get’s too old to strut.
Was Tuesday’s loss the fault of a crooked official with a grudge? Was it just the Will of the League? Were the Lakers really the better team? Or was it just bad playing on the part of the Spurs. One thing I have learned over these last few seasons is to never count the Silver and Black out until the very end. Though, to hear some people talk about it, Thursday’s game will be as embarrassing as a fart in church.
It wasn’t only the Spurs who woke up to the dismal sound of doom and despair on Wednesday. George W. Bush heard his own banshee wailing within the pages of Scott McClellan’s damning memoir. McClellan was White House Press Secretary from May 2003 to April 2006 (Ah, the good years) and as such his book gave a supposedly inside look at the inscrutable W. Bush White House but in doing so basically calls the President a liar and the media a bunch of enabling cowards. He even says of himself: “I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be.”
Yes Scott, you most certainly did. What happened to Loyalty? What kind of media whore did you turn out to be, after all, and what makes you any different from those you’ve condemned?
Since when has “Washington's Culture of Deception” been any different? I don’t recall being handed the whole truth by any U.S. President while I’ve been alive…Not from Nixon, Not from Ford, Not from Carter, Not from Reagan, Not from Bush and certainly Not from Clinton. Can Scott McClellan really so naïve as to believe that Politics is anything other than self promotion of some sort? Or is he just practicing his own sorry brand of it and trying to cover his own sorry ass so he can find a job when the dust settles?
What really pisses me off with his book is that it’s just going to give those idiots who blame the White House for 9/11 even more fodder for their already out of hand insanity. Show some responsibility, Scott. And let’s face it- if he’d really had that much of a problem with what was going on shouldn’t he have taken a more honorable way out? It’s not too late to fall on your own sword and regain a measure of what honor you have left, Scott.
Wait, did I just say that? No, I didn’t. And even if I did surely it didn’t suggest what it sounded like. This isn’t Feudal Japan, or Ancient Rome, or even the Nixon White House, where dissenters were in serious danger of getting threatening late night phone calls and strange packages delivered to their mother’s at grey-care.
Hell no! We live in a kinder and gentler age; a Different Time Altogether. Why, it could very well be the age of First Contact. Well, at least according to The Rocky Mountain News, who reported on Rocky Mountain Oddball Jeff Peckman. Peckman, who has been pushing an initiative to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission to prepare for the day that we make First Contact, has promised to show a video on Friday that purports to show a “Living Breathing Space Alien”.
Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t anything out there. Nor am I saying that Peckman might not have actual footage of something “far out”. But seriously, does he really believe that he is going about it the right way?
Of course, I know, I mean what exactly would be “the right way” to go about letting people know that “we are not alone”? Still, the only ones that are going to buy into it are the odd ball fringe that will buy into anything that will distract them from their mediocre lives. It’s going to take a ship landing on the Washington Mall to make believers out of most skeptics, and even then it’s going to take some convincing to assure them it’s not a promotion for a movie or for Pepsi.
Let’s face it, people don’t want to know if there’s intelligent life outside of our solar system. Most of them are too concerned with the orbits of their own lives to worry about such things as First Contact. They’ve become a nation of worriers, concerned about the environment, and gas prices, and being well liked by the people who want to blow us up.
They are, like I said, a kinder and gentler people…And we’re all the more fucked because of it.

The Trouble with 9/11 “Truthers”

"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives."
-Oscar Wilde

This post by Tallyman over on Surfing the Apocalypse is another good example of the stupidity that has crippled otherwise sensible people. Have we all become so brain addled and complacent that we can suffer fools like these to spew their nonsense on any public forum?
This post shows all the hallmarks of the typical “truther”. For example, notice how he begins by stating how he “was at first inclined to believe” that the attacks on 9/11 were carried out by “Arab terrorists”. He states this as though belief has anything to do with facts, putting terrorists in the same category as Santa Clause or the tooth-fairy. But wait, he has something better than facts! For, he goes on to state, “[s]omething did not look right, feel right”. Jump Back! Wait a moment! It’s all about how he FEELS, all of a sudden, and never-you-mind empirical evidence, logic, or reason. Why, in mere days (not the months of painstaking forensic study, computer diagramming, metallurgical inquiry, architectural and structural examination, etc.) this genius was able to reject the “Official Version of Events” and then “actively sought out similar points of view”...Because, as we all know, the way to seek out the truth is to find people who agree with you.
He then goes on to invoke the name of one of the nuttiest fruitcakes on the rack, David Ray-Griffin, who was neither a “main writer” nor an “investigator”, but rather a retired theologian and philosopher, who suddenly decided that he had a moral leg up on everyone else in the field and was somehow, more qualified to discuss history, politics, and the global economy.
Mr. Tallyman’s post then degenerates into a sordid miasma of quasi-religious, self-righteous ramblings, misquoting the Bible for his own ends and, at times, making up his own theological interpretations of the teachings of Christ. Through it all he remains completely laughable, taking wild strides of fancy that have made these 9/11“truthers” some of the shadiest, most devious, and dangerous chumps to hijack the alternative media.
In what I can only assume is meant to be some kind of scathing indictment of Christian leaders’ silence on his dismal view of the “truth”, he exposes some of the major flaws in the “movement”.
Take, for example, the complete lack of any textual or empirical support for his point of view (which, I suppose, is along the lines of all the other cracked pots who blame our obviously hyper-competent government for secretly masterminding and perpetrating the events of that terrible day) and instead, focuses on the absolute wrongness of those who do not Feel the way he feels. Why should Christian leaders back up his point of view? Although at one point I’m pretty certain he comes close to likening himself to Jesus Christ, I’m not entirely certain that this is enough to convince the American clergy to take it to the streets Old School 60’s style.
No, today’s modern Jesus Freak needs more than the word of a few college drop outs and mainstream burnouts. When it comes to this brand of nonsense, they need more than faith, buddy, they need facts. What does it say when the same people that reject Evolution have also, according to his post, rejected the “truth” movement?

"A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones who need the advice.”
-Bill Cosby

A few months back, I was talking to a Canadian friend of mine, who thought it would be a good idea to share some of her beliefs on the events of that day, mainly about how not only did the US government let it happen, but that Bin Laden and his group were the invention of the CIA, and were being used as part of a “neocon plot” to steal away our civil liberties and lead the country into war.
It was unfortunate timing on her part that I happened to be drunk, ornery, and mean when she brought all this up, and I sliced into her stupidity like a thresher into a farm boys arms. I haven’t heard much out of her since then, but then I’m not losing any sleep over it. It did make me wonder, however, because she was one of those that spent some time in the Middle East around the same time as I. Did she not encounter Islamist fundamentalist sympathizers in her time there? How could she have spent several years in the region and not once have run across some taxi driver or local yokel who tried to convert her to Islam because it was a superior way of life, and would one day spread across the world? Or meet even one glaring-eyed, gallabaya wearing idiot with a dark spot on his head (from all the praying) who condemned her with his stare for being a loose and immoral western harlot who he’d like to see stoned in the streets for corrupting his sons? Was her time in Cairo so insulated that she never once paid attention to the wild ravings on the loudspeakers from the mosques on Fridays? Could it be that she just never paid attention or was I just too over exposed to the culture?
And so it has come down to that, hasn’t it? Is it possible that my absolute certainty that a pack of knife waving, kaffeyya wrapped desert devils want nothing more than to run through the streets of American cities, shrilly chanting Quranic verses and blowing themselves up in orgiastic fits of religious expression comes from my having spent a little too much time around the natives over there?
Things were different back then, weren’t they? When they’d gather together to monotonously chant “Boosh-Boosh-Boosh” they were talking about Herbert Walker, the Liberator of Kuwait, and they meant those chants in a good way. Now when they do that they are talking about his son, our sitting president, the Liberator of Iraq, but they say it as though they are trying to spit beard hairs out of their throats, and they mean it in a most decidedly bad way. Back then the worst America-bashing I encountered came from our so called allies, the Brits, the Canadians, the Australians, all those “Commonwealth” vassals-of-the-Queen countries, who could not stand that we were, basically, their bigger, badder, and just plain cooler cousin.
Those same people are still bashing us, only now they have the company of most everyone else in the world, and a good plenty of our own people here in the Homeland, as well. This brings us back to Mr. Tallyman and his vacuous ilk, the “truthers”.
They’re the worst kind of America-Bashers. They’re not trying to seek out the truth because they’re any more righteous or moral than anyone else; they’re doing it because they want to placate the rest of the world. I think that on some deep, dark, dirty level they genuinely believe that if the Enemies of America see how well they think of themselves that they’ll just give up, put down their knives, take off their suicide belts, and want to be their friends. These people are the lowest kinds of coward, hiding behind their make-believe causes and pretending to be noble. I could excuse naiveté, even pity it, but these people are dangerously stupid if they think they’re going to make the world a better place with their delusions and fantasies, and I for one, am sick of them.

"Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do. "
-Bertrand Russell

Weekly World News Silenced

So they’ve finally killed-off the Weekly World News and the world is a duller place because of that. No more shall we stand in a supermarket checkout line and let our attention take in the shocking news that “Dick Cheney is a Robot”. (“Just Like a Stepford Wife!” The splash assures us.) This publication started out around the time that I first started to read the things around me...I mean really take in my surroundings. For a kid, sitting caged in one of those rolling metal death traps that are shopping carts, those magazines racks were right at eye level, and I took it all in, along with the candy and bubble gum right beside them.
Now, those supermarket rags, as I understand this, are holdovers from the 1950’s, that glorious Post-War era that seems to have just paved the Yellow Brick Road to Hell for Western Civilization. It was a time when women were expected to stay at home and do housework, which, of course, included the shopping. In between her doing the vacuuming (in heels and pearls, of course!) and using the latest technological advances of a modern kitchen to prepare delicious meals for her family, she would take time out and amuse herself with a variety of entertaining game shows, variety programming, and, of course, the “stories” on television, (many of them still brought to you courtesy of the very same brand name sponsors as back then.)
Of course, this relic, this model of the “Modern Wife” of that era would also find distraction(and some still do, I believe) at the checkout line, by browsing tabloids that told not only of the gossip of the Hollywood Stars and various pop celebrities but hyped also the fictional happenings and machinations of the various characters from their stories. But I digress. You see, as a kid, sitting there, in a supermarket, deciphering these cryptic headlines on my own, I made a serious and solid decision…I chose the one about Bigfoot and UFOS over the “Who Shot JR” ones.
I wasn’t intentionally exposed to such garbage, you understand. I mean, my mother taught English and expected better from me. She selected, and made sure I completed, a summer reading list every year, and would engage me in conversation (i.e. quiz me) on selected topics from the readings, and, once, she went to bat for me with the nuns when I got kicked out of fifth grade for reading Mark Twain during recess. How could I let her know that I would cunningly purchase and read any copy of that pulp rag that I could lay my hands on? Thanks to some skillful distribution of comic books and newspapers in my life, however no one ever caught on that I was reading the Weekly World News.
In high school I realized that, no matter how cool it was to believe that Debbie Gibson was pregnant with Elvis’ two headed love child, it was really not going to happen. But by that point I was also writing actively, and taking great pleasure in learning about it as a craft, an art, and a potential livelihood, and I looked at the Weekly World News as a fun guide to outlandish creativity.
You see, the headlines were always fun and clever: “Man Marries Computer & Becomes a GIGAMIST!”, “Imelda Marcos Skins Children for More Shoes!”, “Vegan Vampire Attacks Trees”. And they always pulled it off with just the right edge of suspicion and veracity to make one both chuckle and wonder. It helped me develop a healthy understanding of the relatively plausible, the plainly outlandish, and the just plain freaky. (Gotta love those Freaks!)
In later years, through college overseas, then coming back and living in a brand new kind of neo-post-modern hell, The Weekly World News offered only small portion of its former vigor. Batboy had become all the rage and they were putting out way too many headlines about him, and about Jesus, God, and the End of Days. But they still came through, every week, drawing readers into a style and place, where anything could, sometimes did, happen.
But, in the end it seems that The Paper was just past it’s time. Still published in glorious black and white, still hawking Elvis sightings, alien encounters, conspiracies within the government, and newly discovered prophecies, it was, after a point, doomed.
I once told a good friend that I believed that, if indeed, Signs of the End of the World were to be made manifest, and the Four Horsemen were to Ride, the Weekly World News would most likely report it first. Now, I’m pretty sure, it would be on the Drudge Report, or YouTube, or some such site long before it made it to print. (And would be followed for days by talking head commentary, analysis, and reaction.)
We are living, now, in an age where real world worries and horrors far outweigh the imagined ones of extra terrestrial rectal probes and Chinese organ stealing rings. These days nothing is shocking, nothing takes us by surprise, and not much makes us think, anymore. People openly accuse the government of the most ridiculous schemes and revile their elected leaders as the worst kind of diabolical cabal, and it passes for insightful mainstream political criticism.
Parent company, American Media, Inc. gave no public reason for their decision to close down the presses at the WWN, but one insider said that the reasons for shutting down don’t make any sense. Now, they say that the Website will remain and that it’s only the print edition that is defunct, but people seem to have long given up on Bigfoot, The Loch Ness Monster, Elvis, and Batboy. What people want now are sources, they expect hard facts, and as much of the illusion of accuracy that television or the internet can offer them. Why shell out for a black and white tabloid when you can log in and find any number of strange happenings, bizarre tales, and weird people. Mostly they’re a lousy bunch of loudmouth whack-jobs sounding off about their brand of insanity but, because of the way it’s delivered, people believe that it is “Now fortified with 10% more Truth!”
I’ve long since drifted away from reading tabloids, have only scanned a few stories while waiting in line at the stores, but losing the WWN a loss is to me because they were never afraid to take it one step too far, and they never took themselves too seriously, they did as much to inform as to entertain. Their twisted style of trashy strangeness, their unapologetic exploitation of Freaks, Geeks and Weirdos, it all appealed to sick bastards out there like me. Their lurid stories were like junk food for my brain, a kind of mental candy on which to chew, and I will miss the headlines at the checkout counter, about Elvis, and Bigfoot, and even Batboy…but you know...I believe that I will miss the Freaks most of all.

I was tagged by Kel over on KelKnits for a Wikipedia Birthday Meme a few weeks ago. I figured that since it was so close to the actual birthday, I would just wait and post it now.

August 1st
3 Events:
30 BC - Octavian (later known as Augustus) enters Alexandria, Egypt, bringing it under the control of the Roman Republic.
1966 – Charles Whitman kills 15 people shooting from the Main Building at The University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.
1981 - MTV begins broadcasting and airs its first video, "Video Killed The Radio Star" by the Buggles.

2 Birthdays:
1819 - Herman Melville, American writer (d. 1891)
1942 - Jerry Garcia, American musician (The Grateful Dead) (d. 1995)

1 Holiday:
Lammas - Neopagan festival of Lammas.

I don’t know how much fun that was, but it was certainly informative.

Sweet Sweep!

A few years ago someone I trust gave me some very good advice: “Never write about a team that you’re backing because it just invites their savage loss.” I’ve ignored that advice before and have ended up trying to rationalize some surprise flogging to a team that showed every promise of victory. The majority of those whippings have been handed to the San Antonio Spurs, after I’ve gotten too caught up in the moment and proclaimed their supremacy too soon. This has happened way too often during the NBA Finals.
Now the Fat Lady has sung in San Antonio and the Spurs have won their 4th NBA title since that ugly abbreviated 1999 season, and I feel safe enough to write about them, without the chance of calling down their doom. Of course, there’s not much left to be said, now. Now, it’s all over and the Spurs have gone far beyond the “asterisk” season.

Back when their play-off run began I was celebrating Fiesta Week (Post on that to follow). They started off low, with an April 23rd loss to the Denver Nuggets, and since I know people there and had bet on the Spurs with confidence, I was disheartened with their start. But Denver was unable to come up with another win against the Spurs, and even Carmelo Anthony, looked like he was moving in slow motion against Tony Parker and Tim Duncan. The Spurs went on to win not only their next four (4) games against Denver but their first game on May 6th against the Phoenix Suns.
That was when I started to feel that creeping doom hovering around them. I started watching the games with a sense of dark foreboding. I’d talk to people here in San Antonio who were giddy but not willing to commit to the idea that the Spurs could pull it off again. “They can do it,” they’d say. “But I’m not going to start getting crazy about it until they get into the Finals.” Quite so.
Truth is, Spurs fans have had their hearts broken too many times in too few years at that stage of the game. From Fishers impossible shot in 2004 (that not only cost us the game but the Will to go on), to the gut-wrenching game 7 loss in 2006, that went to the Dallas Mavericks in overtime because of a terribly timed foul that Manu Ginobili handed Dirk Nowitski.
That was a cruel defeat to Dallas. The Spurs were working on a repeat title win, had a franchise record of 63 wins, were #1 in the West, and had played some of the best basketball ever seen. But Victory is a fickle mistress, you know? And the Spurs and the fans found out the hard way that, sometimes you eat the bear and other times the bear eats you.
This year Dallas held such a mighty record that the rest of the League was vying for second place for the most of the last third of the regular season. So, when the Spurs failed to rank second, and had to settle for third behind the Suns, well, no one got too excited about it. If we made it past Denver and the Suns, we would surely have to face Dallas in the Western Conference Finals. Nobody, not even I, wanted to imagine that savage match-up when this whole this started back during Fiesta Week or at any other time, for that matter. This year, though, it was the Dallas Mavericks turn to be eaten by the bear and it wasn’t the Spurs that did it.
In one of the weirdest matchups of the decade, the Golden State Warriors faced off against Dallas, and when it all started, everyone outside the Bay Area just kind of ignored it. But I still know some people in the Bay Area and I had to cheer for Oakland just because I lived there. Also, I had to rail against Mark Cuban and Avery Johnson, I took note of their first win over Dallas and recognized how, with the more of that fast and ready game, the Warriors stood a good chance against them. Also, it was impossible to ignore how the low ranked Warriors were being led by Coach Don Nelson, who was the former Dallas Head Coach. People here still sometimes call the Mavs “The Team that Nellie Built”, and we kind of feel that Cuban hired on former Spur Avery Johnson as Nellie’s assistant coach (promoted to head coach) with the sole purpose of taking out the Spurs. I am sure that he chafes at the thought of walking in Don Nelson’s shadow.
I had to get a taste of that action because, in my own warped mind, I was looking at it like Obi Wan Kenobi facing off with a Pre-Vader Anakin on Mustafar. Also, after watching the way that Baron Davis and Stephen Jackson handled Dallas, I got one of those feelings about that series, a weird, tingly itch that someone who likes sports needs to learn to heed.
The Warriors ended Dallas’s dream of a NBA Title in six (6) games, and the look on Mark Cubans face was priceless. To hell with him, we wanted to start an I-35 rivalry with the Spurs, and the team did their best to work up to that, but payback is a real bitch and when you got it coming to you, not even the best record and a flawless performance can stop the hammer when it falls.
Golden State advanced to take on the Utah Jazz and lost it 4-1, and the Spurs went up against the Phoenix Suns.
The Jazz were strong all season, and took out the Houston Rockets, 4-3 in the series. Utah was relieved to have a break from another Texas team and went out to take Golden State in five (5) games.
For San Antonio, the Suns were the hardest team to overcome in the post-season. Coach Mike D’Antoni is a very sharp and shrewd opponent and Steve Nash is the Tim Duncan West of the Pecos. But the Suns are not a one horse team, hell no! Amare Stoudemire, Leandro Barbosa, Shawn Marion, Boris Diaw, and Raja Bell, those guys were a beauty to watch on the court against the Spurs. The series was bloody and intense, with an injury, a nasty flagrant foul and one bad blowout. In the end the Spurs took it 4-2 in Phoenix.
The Jazz came on strong but the Spurs were coming off back to back wins to close out Phoenix and blew past Utah for two games before they were able to match up. The Jazz were able to sock one 83-109 loss to the Spurs but the series closed out 4-1, sending San Antonio to their 4th NBA Final since 1999.
That was when people here started to get a little crazy. With our position secured it was finally time to relax and push the team to the Final Victory of the season, the Big Win. The East was ready and when the dust settled it was the Cleveland Cavaliers left standing. In the slow and jabber filled days before the first game the buzz was all about their LeBron James, “King James”.
For years yammering loudmouths have been trying to compare this kid with Michael Jordon. I could understand it back in 03, or even 05, but this was the Big Time and was neither the time nor the place for that kind of insipid and sloppy talk. We suffered all the talk about how the Spurs are “boring” (applied to Tim Duncan and our whole Fundamentals style game), or that we play “dirty” (A term applied derisively to both Bruce Bowen and Robert Horry).
The truth is that, game-for-game, the San Antonio Spurs have become one of the best teams in the NBA. Coach Gregg Popovitch has applied the strict and pure style of basketball he honed at the Air Force Academy, and added to it the sense of Family and camaraderie that makes champions shine. No one can deny that the Spurs’ have the numbers and the record of Champs but what the Spurs do not have is a moral miscreant player under investigation for a felony, which, I believe, must be a requisite to be a “superstar” team, in far off places like L.A. and Detroit, and maybe Cleveland.
I think it exposes a weird sort of prejudicial bias in America against San Antonio. People don’t have that reaction to the Mavs or the Rockets but, as we have proven time and again, the Spurs are simply a better team. We are so good, in fact, that we have never lost a Finals series…The Spurs have won the championship every time they’ve been in it.
The past few days have been a flurry of action and excitement. I needed to find a way to cash in on, what everyone knew, was a losing battle for the Cavs. After the Spurs took back to back wins in San Antonio no one was taking the LeBeron talk seriously anymore. It wasn’t just that he didn’t score well, he didn’t score at all until the 3rd quarter of one game. He missed rebounds, boggled passes, and embarrassed himself on the court in front of the world time and time again. It was bad enough that we had to watch LeBron stink up the court but were were forced to watch LeBron in the station breaks and in Nike commercials, in Sprite commercial, and in promos. When compared with his actual performance during the game it all seemed like some sad, sick joke, and helped expose the kid for the overgrown and overrated man-child product of a media driven sensationalist cash culture that can glorify the “American Idol Winner” of the NBA, and deride a solid player like Duncan, who is so focused and dedicated, that he was jokingly referred to as “Spock” by the Duke student section when he was at Wake Forrest.
When the Spurs won game 3 on Tuesday my mother took out her broom. The entire city was at last confident and content that our Spurs were not only going to beat the Cavaliers at Quicken Loans Arena, but that we were going to humiliate them on world wide television, win it in a sweep, and then bring the trophy home for one huge party. I bet against the Spurs in game 3. It was a fit of manic idiocy that had to be done. I was winning too many of my bets and people stopped wanting to play with me, so I had to take one in the side, and lose on what was one of the lousiest games of basketball I’ve seen in ages. The Spurs played sloppily, failing to convert on turnovers, missed easy layups, and futzed around the court way too much. The Cavs buckled under the pressure of a powerful Spurs defense, and LeBron, while active and out there, was held back by Bowen, Horry, Duncan, and anyone else who could get into position, if needed. The Spurs didn’t win it because they were better, they won it because the Cavs were worse.
Last nights game 4 was beautiful because we won. We swept and we won and, in the end, that is all that matters. The Cavs looked strong for most of the game but after the half the Spurs mustered a weak rally, relied on basics, took advantage of gaping holes in the Defense, and just outplayed Cleveland. The thought that they would lose this game never entered my mind, not even when it looked like it could go into overtime, or when it came down to free throws, fouls, and possessions. Tony Parker continued to outshine LeBron, his post-season experience helping him overcome the faltering Cavaliers defense. (Parker picked up the Finals MVP trophy, and he earned every inch of it.) Manu and Fabricio Oberto worked their magic from the inside and the out, helping the spurs over come a ping-ponging deficit. Francisco Elson and Michael Finley turned up the heat in and out of the paint, and Brent Barry and Jacques Vaughan kept the Cavs guessing and running in circle. As the clocked ticked down, it was painfully clear to the Cleveland bench, fans, and the world that this was not to be their year.
There was no confetti for the Spurs in Cleveland. There were random boos and jeers from the crowd as David Stern presented the Spurs organization with their trophies. However, there was joy there and in the locker room, and there was celebration on the streets of San Antonio. The players celebrated with each other, and with family, friends and loved ones. In bars, homes, and out on the streets of downtown, there was merriment, sound, and passion.
The Spurs arrive back in town around 2 pm. The city is running shuttles to the Airport to greet them for a party. On Sunday there is going to be a parade on the river to show off the trophies, then, in the evening, a celebration at the Alamodome.

I’ve been up all night after the celebrations and revelry. Today I will collect on my bets watch their arrival on TV, and tonight, party with the rest of the city. The Spurs have won 4 titles in 9 years, and I’m sure that people will want to start using the word “dynasty”. Probably the same morons that talk about how boringly good the Spurs are, or how great Parker has become, or how LeBron will be better someday. You won’t really hear people here talking too much about records, or streaks, dynasties. Not yet at least. I, for one, am not taking any chances. Why Doom them now? I and the city will probably just enjoy this Sweet Sweep Victory, and another title, until sometime late next season…Then come see me about the odds on a Repeat.