General Chaos

A man whose job apparently wasn't quite hard enough

Nobody asked, so stop telling - General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reaped the whirlwind today after telling the Chicago Tribune that he believes homosexuality to be immoral and therefore unwelcome in the U.S. military. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as well as various advocacy groups, have expressed their displeasure at Pace's airing of his view that:

"I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral, and that we should not condone immoral acts."

Well, okay then. Some people feel that way, others will disagree. Gays in the military is a touchy subject, with strong feelings on both sides of the issue. Certainly Gen. Pace is entitled to his opinion. That said, why the Hell did he feel that it was appropriate for him to take that opinion and go in front of the national media with it?

Are America's armed forces really in that good of shape? Are things really so calm and well-ordered that the top military officer in the country thought it a prudent time to upset this particular apple cart? In short, did we really need this?

No. Is the simple answer. Unless the root cause of improvised explosive devices in Iraq and nuclear sabre-rattling in North Korea is an international contempt for a military which could conceivably at some point in the future allow boys who like to kiss other boys to serve openly in uniform, it seems a safe bet that Gen. Pace has managed to create a problem we didn't already have.

What this highlights, of course, is a problem which we did have but only just found out about.

Basically, the most powerful military figure in our nation either isn't bright enough to figure out that on-the-record gay bashing would cause trouble, or else isn't sane enough to realize that consensual sodomy features nowhere on the Big List O'Things Our Armed Forces Should Be Worrying About Right Now. Hence, here's a new medal for the General, to be worn not upon the chest but across the mouth:

y General Peter Pace - General, you have the right to your opinion. You also have the right to remain silent, and of those two inalienable prerogatives it seems pretty clear which you should be exercising. Just do your job - win our wars if you can, and if you can't, at least act like you're trying. Push little model tanks around on a big map with a shuffleboard stick. Hell, you can slyly encourage heterosexuality among our fighting boys by wrangling shipments of Playboy Playmates for the USO -- just don't worry your pretty little head about the effect that might have on our fighting girls. And if you must worry about the dire military implications of girl-on-girl action, keep it to yourself. If you don't tell us, we promise not to ask.

The Special Olympian of Muggers

Years of frustration at having his candy taken away by babies finally boils over

A fair fight, apparently - Rose Morat, 101 years old, lost $33 when a mugger assaulted her in the lobby of her Queens apartment building. Thanks to surveillance footage we can see that Ms. Morat - who was born during the Theodore Roosevelt administration - stayed on her feet after her assailant punched her in the head four times and fled.

The unidentified attacker held the door open for Ms. Morat, who turned sixteen the year the Ottoman Empire was dissolved, and then struck her repeatedly in her 101-year-old face. He then left with the pocketbook of the still-upright Queens resident.

It appears that the attack on Ms. Morat, who could have celebrated her twenty-first birthday at the grand opening of the first 'talkie' and who did not lose her balance after being punched four times in rapid succession, may not be the first mugging perpetrated by this particular miscreant. Recently, an 85-year-old woman was similarly assaulted in the same neighborhood. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly resolved to "stop him before he strikes again" - or before he becomes overconfident and gets himself killed trying to mug a Boer War veteran.

Some law-breakers help pay their debt to society by doing community service with the elderly. This guy wouldn't last ten minutes. That alone earns him a big minus-sign, which he may wear upon his forehead as protection against walker-bound women less than a century in age:

y The biggest wimp in New York - We live in a permissive culture at a permissive time. There is practically no manifestation of sociopathy that can't be glorified. But remember, this is America - the one vice we cannot tolerate is mediocrity, and this centigenarian-slapper simply doesn't make it. Let there be no confusion: mugging is wrong. Mugging old women is very wrong. But even things not worth doing are worth not doing well, and if you can't plant granny on her101-year-old ass with the fourth punch, you should really consider a change in career. Perhaps grave robbery is more this guy's speed?

School for Scandal

Students have been caught making spice racks under the bleachers

"Plays too well with others" - It's no secret that in spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. The problem is, even if you stretch your definition of 'young man' to include a sixth grader, and even if your take on love encompasses having sex in front of ten of your schoolmates, there's no way that last November counts as 'spring'. Last November is when two students at Raymond Park Middle School in Indiana were caught rounding home plate during shop class. Inquiring bloggers would like to know why the school authorities only just got around to mentioning the incident to the general public.

According to "a disturbed resident" and courtesy of the local NBC affiliate:

"...during school hours in a classroom with an experienced teacher present, two sixth graders completed the act of intercourse...at least ten students were witnesses. No disciplinary actions were taken against the teacher... All teachers were told to keep quiet."

And all teachers did, thus putting the icing on this triple-layer shame-cake. And since sharing is an important value for kids to learn in school (in addition to such necessary shop class skills as screwing, nailing, pounding, drilling, etc.), let's dish out a piece to everybody involved who failed to meet the standards of basic human decency which might be reasonably expected of them:

y The parents - Little Bobby and Little Suzie didn't just spontaneously decide to make the beast with two adolescent backs because she checked the 'I like you' box on the note he passed her during English. There are issues at work here, and issues upon issues.

y The teacher - Surely a level of oversight adequate for the supervision of children handling dangerous tools would have sufficed to detect them handling each other.

y The school - Reasonable people can disagree about what exactly the school should have done - but it should probably have fallen into the category of 'something'.