1) Artest is, was, and always will be a punk ass
whack job. It wasn't just this incident.
Charles Barkley, he of the go into the stands
to straighten up the fans?, said Brother Ron needs to get himself some
counseling.
That being said, I agree with you entirely.
A $40.00 ticket doesn't give a fan the right to
hurl insults and beer. They'll indict you for throwing the wrong
shit in the sea lion
cage at the zoo, but throwing beer at a man?,
that's OK? 'Cause he makes $5M a year? I don't think so. And
I am Detroit borne
and bred, long time Pistons fan.
2) The marine. He was wrong.
But he had no choice.
He was in an impossible situation after days
of being under intolerable, impossible stress. After months of
intolerable stress.
He'll get fucked for it, though it's Rummy-Bush-Cheney-Wolfowitz-Condi-and
the roll-over-son-of-a-bitch-trading-on-his-
good-name-Powell's fault. It is criminal
that tese mostly civilians and/or kids are put in that situation.
The Beast is responsible; the kid will pay.
3) De jure everybody gets treated the same.
De facto it doesn't work that way. That's a large part of the argument
regarding the
racially disparate treatment of murder indictees.
If the victim is white, the punishment is more likely to be death than
if the victim is black.
I refuse to watch these stupid trial things (I
probably spent a total of 30 minutes watching OJ coverage; none on Peterson)(they
seem
to be precursors and extensions of 'reality'
TV, which I also don't understand). The law should be dispassionate.
Especially where
the death penalty is involved. Remember
Gov. Dukakis fumble on the what if your wife was raped and murdered question?
My answer to that is that I would take that mother
effer and...(cough)...and
that's why there shouldn't be a death penalty.
It is not a punishment. It's vengeance.
On my own, deciding for myself, I might decide to break the law and do
the mutha myself.
I don't expect you to do it for me. Society
has no fucking business doing vengeance.
Besides, the needle is no punishment at all.
None. No book of myths will ever convince me that meeting a maker
will cause
eternal punishment. Even if that's all
Gospel Truth, it's e-fucking-ternal. Fifty or sixty years before
it begins makes absolutely
no difference to anybody involved in the process.
Let me ask anyone: would you rather be locked in a 6 X 8 cage and never
see another kind human face for the next fifty
years? Or would you rather go to sleep and entirely without any pain
whatsoever
just not wake up?
A copole years back I got my appendix out.
General anesthesia. They did incredible mayhem to me, sliced open
my belly,
ripped out internal organs, put staples through
my flesh, tubes down my throat, and needles in my arm, a whole bunch of
stuff
that hurts a lot worse than being given a powerful
muscle relaxant. The only thing I ever felt was the needles in my
arm before
things got rolling. If I hadn't woken up,
well Idda never known it. That's no punishment. If the
guy's guilty, I want him to suffer.
I want him to pay. No calculus in the world
will ever convince me that McVeigh somehow paid for 167 lives with his
one worthless life.
I want him alive and hated, not dead and forgotten.
Finally, the dead guy can't be brought back if
he is exonerated. He's dead, and we're real sorry about that, but
we needed
the 'closure' of our vengeance at the time, so
c'est la vie, or le mort, as the case may be.
Bottom line, you called each one right, though we may differ some on the reasoning.
Mort.