And there's more shitty news

Never underestimate the people of Central Illinois. We know what suckers will buy:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081128/ap_on_fe_st/odd_reindeer_ornaments

Australia - the movie

Mid-Thanksgiving afternoon we decided to head to the big city to see Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in the new release "Australia." Here's my short review:

1. beautiful scenery and camera shots
2. movie should have expanded the desert crossing and ended the movie before the bombing raid
3. writer tried to put too much into one movie; was it an Austrailian Outback western or a WWII movie? Comedy, romance or drama?
4. should have avoided the Aboriginal assimilation plotline; there are much superior movies which address that issue (i.e. Rabbit-Proof Fence)
5. My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I really wanted to see Daniel Craig as James Bond. It would have been time better spent.

Happy Thanksgiving

Washing away the sins of youth

A group of high school teenagers was happily washing windows of the stores in the downtown business district. Most of the kids were from good families and seemed to be enjoying both the work and the camaraderie. Owners of those establishments, including myself, were caught off guard with this generosity. Many of us offered them some compensation for their work, but they refused. The business community was abuzz about the fine young people we have in our community.

By happenstance, I discovered the truth weeks later. All of these kids were in a required community service program through the county probation diversion program. All had been drunk and arrested while attending an under-aged party out in the country. If they performed community service, charges would be expunged from their records.

Yesterday, I attended an event in which a county probation officer, explained the diversion and Restorative Justice programs the county offers to juveniles and adults. It was explained that these programs are highly successful and that the recidivism rate in our county is only 21% after one year of completing the program. The probation officer emphasized the word "shame" as a large contribution to the success rate. Doing community service and facing your victims in private controlled confrontations supposedly "shame" the perpetrators into being sorry.

Skeptic that I am, I questioned some of the statistics and the public "shame." First of all, these programs are voluntary, meaning the perpetrators can opt out and go straight to court taking their chances with a good attorney, so the success rate might be skewed because you have willing participants, some who may be genuinely sorry in the first place.

Secondly, I questioned the "shame" put upon these perpetrators. I sighted the above example in this post. The downtown business people certainly saw no guilt in those teens washing windows; they were having a great time. In fact, they were admired by those observing them. They were not humiliatingly marked with a scarlet letter telling the public they were bad boys, and I certainly did not see a probation officer in the vicinity as they were working. Perhaps he was hiding.

In the Restorative Justice program, the meeting between perpetrators and victims is closed to all outsiders, except a mediator and several other community members. Nothing decided in that meeting is made public. The "shame" only occurs if the perpetrator later happens to meet the victim or those other community members elsewhere. There is no real public shame.

The speaker mentioned that several 13-14 year olds recently went on a vandalism crime spree and were facing 5 felony counts. They went through the Restorative Justice program so now they have no criminal record. The victims have been compensated. Although a perpetrator can go through a county Restorative Justice program only once, there is no database, so if he commits a crime in another county he might receive another get out of jail free card. If the family moves often enough, a 13 year old could commit numerous felonies and not ever have a record by the time he's 18.

The proponents of these programs overlook a couple of things in my opinion:

Monetary or service compensation does not put a victim back into the same emotional position as before the crime. Fear, mistrust, and stress cannot necessarily be resolved through compensation. So the program doesn't help the victim emotionally any more than a trial.

Shame should be more public and it will have greater effect. Shame should not be vague and misunderstood. It should be blatant.

Sign of the times

A phone conversation of an elected official overheard recently at an area court house:

" Oh, don't worry about that. You can do anything you want once you get elected."

Beware the Gentile at Christmas

Fellow blogger Little Blog on the Prairie often complains about being Jewish in the nearby university town, especially around the holidays.

When I attended the university there, I spent my freshman year in a privately owned new dormitory. My mother had taken a Woman's Club tour of the place and decided that was where I should live because "it was very nice and had many amenities."

It didn't take me long to discover that the co-ed dorm was 90% occupied by Jewish women and 75% occupied by Jewish men. The dorm was known around campus by a very offensive nickname (similar to Pike's Peak) and when I told new acquaintances where I lived, they asked, "You're Jewish?" I wasn't.

My roommate was a lovely girl from a predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb. She was surprised to discover that I was smart, blond, and white as a sheet. She indicated she had imagined me a black, backwards girl from the wrong side of town, maybe part of the Project 500, with my common last name and small town, "Southern Illinois" address.

I felt we got along just great. I liked her mom and dad, although I thought they were a bit too doting. We ate together, studied together, socialized together. She introduced me to lox and bagels and other ethnic foods. In late November, I had a Christmas tree and she had a Menorah in our dorm window and we taught each other our holiday traditions.

But things changed around that time. She suddenly informed me that she was moving out, immediately, before the semester ended. When I asked why, she said she was afraid of me. That I might try to kill her while she was sleeping. What?

This fear apparently resulted from a conversation we had had about heritage, and I said I had a small bit of German blood in me. My great-great-great, etc. had loaned Gutenberg money to build his printing press.

So even though we both had been born several years past the end of World War II and none of our immediate family had lived in Germany, she feared me because she was Jewish and I had some German blood in me. Some bias had been ingrained in her. Nothing I said could reassure her and she moved out as soon as another room could be found.

Perhaps I should have been happy to have that room all to myself the rest of that year, but it bothered me that what I thought was a good friendship had ended because of bigotry. There was a lot of that occurring on campus during 1968, but I didn't think I would be a victim of it.

Fortunately my other Jewish dorm mates didn't feel the same way, but then again, they didn't have to share a room with me.

Bring back rugged individualism

"To be nobody but yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting." e e cummings

Experts often proclaim that one of the problems with today's children is that they succumb to peer pressure. They want to be like everyone else and they are chastised and bullied if they aren't.

But you can't blame the kids. Society is no longer elevating the individual. Parents are to blame because they want their child to be like everyone else - just as smart, popular, well-dressed as John Smith's kid. Have you notice how so many teen-age girls look exactly alike? And of course, every kid is a winner and they've got awards to prove it.

Educators are to blame because they want to make their jobs easier by teaching standardized syllabus to a uniform group of children, without regard to boredom, challenges and intellect, to reach standardized test standards. Even businesses now practice "team building", encouraging employees to be part of a group, because now it seems the "best" ideas come from a committee approach.

Not so long ago in the rebellious 1960's , most of the teens and college-aged kids were preaching and acting non-conformist. Everyone rebelled from the status quo. But when these same people reached adulthood and began raising their own children, individuality went out the window and conformity became the new standard.

It used to be Americans held the individual in high esteem. Every person being considered unique and special. Individual (adj.) individuals (n.). Now it seems to be cool to be homogenized.

When one doesn't conform, he becomes infinitely more interesting. I personally like people who are a bit peculiar, who aren't afraid to stand out or away from the crowd, and are not ashamed of being who they really are. They have inner strength, self-esteen, and resolve that is almost unknown in the conventional circles.

If you think of some of the most memorable real and even fictional characters in your life, I'll bet they were the individualists, the so-called kooks, the out-of-the box thinkers and creative doers. The bland masses never survive tales of the past.

If peer pressure is such a big problem with today's kids, perhaps parents should start encouraging their children to be non-conformists and teach them to love themselves for who they were born to be. Then there would be no peer pressure problem because the kids wouldn't want to be like everyone else and would be perfectly content as the unique individuals they really are.