You'll love Chuck Norris' graduation speech, or else

You've got to hand it to Liberty University.

When it comes time to find a graduation speaker, most colleges rummage through their Rolladexes and come up with a politician or a business leader or a prominent alumnus. The majority of them are crushingly boring.

LU, on the other hand, has moved way outside the box. Its graduation speaker this year will be Chuck Norris, Mr. Texas Ranger himself.

Don't get too excited, though. I've learned not to.

For those of us in the news business, there is nothing more frustrating than having an interesting graduation speaker waved in our face.

Generally, the person arrives just before the event, reads off a speech full of typical graduation platitudes ("Today is the first day of the rest of your life"; One person can make a difference," etc) and is gone without a trace or an interview opportunity. And all the things that really interest us about that individual are never addressed.

I remember being part of the newspaper team covering George Bush the Elder when he came to speak at LU one year. The Falwell reporter (Jerry was a beat unto himself then) got a piece of him, the political reporter another piece.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked our then City Editor, Bob Morgan.

He thought for a minute.

"I need for you to go out to the airport and make sure his plane doesn't crash."

The worst speaker I ever heard was also at Liberty, Attorney General Ed Meese.

You'd think an Attorney General would have a lot to say about the state of the nation, but I knew we were in trouble when Meese opened with: "I was reading a magazine on the plane here today and came across this quote ..."

Translation: He didn't have the foggiest idea what he was going to talk about when he got on that plane.

Maybe Norris could incorporate some brick-breaking or martial arts throws into his speech. He's older than I thought, though, actually crowding in on age 70. And his real name is Carlos (I learned that from Wikipedia).

Norris was constantly at Mike Huckabee's side during the latter's unsuccessful campaign, perhaps in case the candidate were to be menaced by a terrorist (or Democrat) with a black belt.

"He's a strong Christian, he's a strong conservative, and he's honored to be coming to LU," said school chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr.

In recent years, Norris has spoken out on such issues as creationism (he's for it) and prayer in public schools (ditto).

In fact, Norris' wife Gena sent a telegram to the student body saying that God wanted Chuck to be there.

He may have wanted Laura Bush there, too, but she turned down an earlier invitation (a prior commitment with her daughters). So on May 10, in the LU football stadium, Liberty students will get to listen to the first local commencement speaker ever able to beat up anyone in the audience (even at 67).

Perhaps Norris will even put his own spin on the typical graduation mush.

"It's time to spread your wings, and smack somebody upside the head."

"One man with a gun can make a difference."

It would be a refreshing change.

Maybe Mike Huckabee is onto something

There was a lot of hand-wringing from political writers recently when former Arkansas governor and God-fearing Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said he thought the Constitution should be based on the Ten Commandments. Or something like that.

Personally, I think that would be a great idea.

For openers, we would have to immediately pull our troops out of Iraq, or at least disarm them, because of the sixth commandment: “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” Try as I might, I couldn’t find any clauses in there about being able to kill people with whom we disagree. And the death penalty? Forget about it. (Oh, yeah – no more abortions, either: Mike was right about that).

No graven images. What would that mean for the advertising industry?

Welcome back, Blue Laws.

Honor thy father and mother. Doesn’t that kind of sound like we should have a national health care plan, especially for the elderly?

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Oops – time to rethink the way political campaigns are conducted.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t interpret the part about taking the Lord’s name in vain as being only about the things we say when we smash our fingers with a hammer. Maybe it also refers to how many people use that name in order to raise money or get elected.

Thou shalt not steal. I don’t see any exemption for the government.

All in all, Mike, you’ve really hit on something. Let’s get that ball rolling!

One thing, though – there's nothing in there about gay marriage. Sorry.

Six dangerous movie myths

Scientific studies have proven that part of our memory -- not just institutional, but personal -- comes from Hollywood.

A classic example is a story Ronald Reagan once told to a group of reporters. He used it to illustrate the true meaning of courage, and it involved a plane that was badly damaged by enemy fire over the English Channel during World War II. As the aircraft shuddered in its death throes, everyone bailed out except for the pilot and a crewman who was too badly injured to evacuate.

According to Reagan, the pilot went to the rear of the plane, put his arm around his comrade, and said: "Don't worry, son -- we'll ride this thing down together."

It was an inspiring and touching tale, and the press corps spent a moment in silent contemplation. Then came a flash of insight.

"If there were only two people on the plane and it crashed," asked one reporter, "who came back to tell this story?"

Turns out the President was really recounting a scene from a 1950s movie. And the aforementioned studies showed that many of us, like Mr. Reagan, occasionally color our memory of past events with Hollywood fiction.

Which is harmless enough, I suppose. But I'd like to touch on six myths (Why six? Because that's all I could think of before my second cup of coffee) perpetuated by nearly a century of films. Some of these can actually be hazardous to our health.

1. If you're persistent enough, you can make another person love you. That's true in movies, where the person being pursued almost always winds up regarding the other's obsessive, semi-crazed behavior as somehow endearing. In real life, though, over-the-top persistence is likely to get you slapped with a stalking summons. And the philosophy that "he/she is the only person for me, and no one else can have him/her" has found its way onto many a police blotter.

Generally speaking, if someone continually rejects you, it's a dead end. Move on.

2. Bullies are always cowards at heart. Thus, they turn to jelly when the 120-pound seventh-grade hero finally stands up to them. That's a nice thought, and might occasionally be true, but the hard fact is, most bullies are that way precisely because they're bigger, stronger and meaner than their peers. A lot of 120-pound would-be heroes have wound up in the emergency room because they believed the movies.

3. Bad guys can't use firearms. A sort of corollary to the myth above. Why is it in movies that hired killers and thugs, who shoot people for a living and thus are presumably good at it, can never hit the hero despite unleashing a lethal spray of bullets at him? I remember a scene from "Beverly Hills Cop" where Eddie Murhpy is running in front of a fence with bullets hitting above and below him, but emerges unscathed.

In reality, despite what the National Rifle Association would have you believe, good guys don't always win in a gunfight.

4. Automobiles always catch on fire when they crash. Why does this always happen in movies? Because it makes for better video. Audiences love to watch things blow up and burn. The problem is, this is often used as an anti-seat belt argument -- "If I have a seatbelt on, I'll be burnt to a crisp when my car catches on fire."

Actually, cars aren't quite as flammable as Hollywood depicts.

5. People dying of a terminal disease always look great. In movies, they still have color in their cheeks and a sparkle in their eyes, even as their life ebbs away and cancerous cells devour their bodies. I think showing the unpleasant reality would go a lot further toward convincing people to get an annual checkup

6. Being smashed over the head by a large, blunt object is really no big deal. I have a friend who is affiliated with a head injury support group and always talks about this. Two people are sneaking up on a lone sentry, and one says: "Should I shoot him?" The other replies: "No, we don't want to hurt him. Just hit him over the head and knock him out."

And, yes, in movies, characters routinely leap to their feet 30 seconds after being rendered unconscious by a rifle butt, pistol or crowbar and dash off in pursuit of whoever did the rifle-butting, pistol-whipping or crowbarring. On screen, they never suffer from double vision, loss of memory or partial paralysis.

Can you think of any more of these? Pass them along.

Honoring MLK's army

Why is it that every great social movement has to have a single human face attached to it to make it real?

With no disrespect to the Rev. Martin Luther King (I don’t want a phone call from Barack Obama’s people), I don’t believe that the civil rights revolution would never have happened if he hadn’t been born. The time was ripe. If it hadn’t been him, some other leader would have emerged.

Therefore, while it’s important to honor a man who gave his life (literally and figuratively) for the cause that shaped his legacy, I believe it’s also important to use Martin Luther King Day as an opportunity to also recognize all the other courageous people who finally took down segregation.

Beginning with …

1. The black World War II veterans who returned from fighting for their country in godforsaken places around the globe, only to be shooed to the back of the bus. The resentment this created smoldered for years until King and others poured gasoline on it.

2. The college students, black and white, who staged sit-ins at lunch counters across the South, not knowing if this act of defiance would result in a plate of grits in the face or a police baton over their heads

3. The Montgomery domestic workers who trudged miles to clean out their employers' cupboards and toilets in order to honor the transportation strike triggered by Rosa Parks.

I remember visiting my relatives in North Carolina as a child and regarding the segregated bathrooms and drinking fountains merely as some quaint local custom. Nobody, black or white, seemed especially distressed by it all (although I know now that was an illusion).

There should have been a sign at the Mason-Dixon Line, clearly visible to southbound travelers: “Welcome to Dixie. We’ve Always Done It This Way.”

King and his followers faced hatred, racism and anger in their crusade. We all know about that. Even more, though, they faced the apathy of a region firmly set in its ways.

And the real dangers to breaking with the established order weren’t being lynched or having a cross burned on your lawn, although those things happened. The real dangers were losing your job, or your friends.

A wise longtime Lynchburg resident once told me something that made a lot of sense regarding the white community and the communal treatment of blacks prior to the 1960s.

“Only a few people really made a big deal out of race,” she said, “maybe 10 percent. But 80 percent of everyone else was afraid of that 10 percent.”

Human nature. You’re walking down the hall in high school and see a bully picking on someone. You keep walking, lest that bully turn on you.

What Martin Luther King did, though, was to invite the reaction of that 10 percent. He baited them, hoping that when they were flushed out into the open, the majority would see them for what they really were.

When racist cops beat up black prisoners in a back room, it went unnoticed. But when Jim Clark and Bull Connor turned fire hoses and police dogs on peaceful demonstrators, the New York Times had a front page story and the networks had great film footage for the 6 o’clock.

King did that. He could not, however, have done it alone. No general can win a battle without an army.

So on this day when King is remembered, here are just a few Central Virginia people who should be acknowledged, as well. Every community had them.

• Anne Spencer, who refused to sit in the back of the bus even before Rosa Parks.
• Vivian Camm, who when she became principal of Garland-Rodes Elementary School, took down the portraits of the Confederate generals for whom the school was named,
• Jim Ould, a white City council member who voted to re-open and integrate the city’s swimming pools in 1965.
• Oliver C. Thaxton, who led a “wade-in” that got those pools closed a year earlier, and lost his trucking business because of it.
• Lynda Woodruff and Owen Cardwell, who took on the enormous challenge of being the first two black students to enroll at E.C. Glass.
• The students from Lynchburg College, Randolph-Macon Woman's College and Virginia Seminary who were jailed for their participation in the lunch counter sit-ins.
• Former Lynchburg Mayor Leighton Dodd (a Caucasian), who spoke out in a memorable meeting about the injustices he felt were being inflicted upon the local black community. He did get a cross on his lawn.

Obviously, I'm leaving out a lot of others. But they know who they are, and so do the people for whom went out on a limb.

The civil rights movement -- and, by extension, all of American society -- owes a large debt of gratitude to Martin Luther King. But what happened was bigger than him, too.

Are you ready for the Packer movie?

It’s almost eerie, what’s happening in the National Football League playoffs. And as I watched the Green Bay Packers decimate the Seattle Seahawks in a swirling snowstorm on Saturday, I sensed a made-for-TV movie waiting to happen.

Even though they don’t look very much alike, I’d pick Woody Harrelson to play Packer quarterback Brett Favre in the inevitable film. Southerners both, they have the same combination of impishness and toughness in their eyes. Think Hawkeye Pierce. Think Burt Reynolds in “Smoky and the Bandit.”

For we can all see where this might be going. When the New York Giants upset Dallas on Sunday, residents of Green Bay must have partied in their slush-filled streets for the second straight night.

Had Dallas won, the Packers would have had to play down there, on a field where they are 1-8 lifetime, against a star player (Terrell Owens) who always performs his best against them.

Now, the Giants have to invade what has become known as the Frozen Tundra. If bad weather isn’t actually predicted, Packer officials might sneak in the night before with some borrowed snow-making machines.

This is all of personal interest to me, because green and gold blood runs in my veins (the nurses who occasionally take samples keep asking me about this). My father was raised in the Green Bay suburb of DePere, and I have a large colony of relatives there -- some of whom are Packer season ticket holders.

Which is a very big deal in the Frozen Tundra, where Packer tickets are handed down in wills and fought over in court. The waiting list for seats, even bad ones, can be decades.

Moreover, the community owns the team, an anomaly in the corporate-centric world of today's NFL. Green Bay's field is named not after some mega-conglomerate, but Curly Lambeau, who started the team back in the 1920s with the backing of a small meat packing company.

But back to the movie. It would all revolve around Favre, one of the true characters in the game. At one point during the 42-20 victory over Seattle, he reached down, packed a snowball, and fired it at wide receiver Donald Driver (as hard as the 38-year-old Favre still hurls a football, I'd hate to be in a snowball fight with him). His unbridled joy lit up the TV screen.

Two years ago, though, Favre was close to rock bottom. His wife, Deanna, was receiving treatment for breast cancer. His brother-in-law, Casey Tyner, had died in an ATV accident. Hurricane Katrina had devastated his home in Kiln, MS. And the Packers were terrible, winning only four games. Favre was ranked 31st out of 32 NFL quarterbacks statistically, and sentiment was growing that he should retire.

Instead, he came back in 2006, leading the Packers to an 8-8 season. Again, retirement rumors swirled around him during the off-season as he rode his tractor and stonewalled the media.

The team wasn't supposed to be any better than in 2007, if not worse. The running backs and wide receivers were young, putting all the pressure on Favre's shoulders when he finally decided to come back. Somehow, though, the team went 13-3 during the regular season before trouncing Seattle.

One play in that Seattle game was vintage Favre, a player known for his improvisation. Chased out of the pocket by a couple of large and menacing Seahawks, he ran to his right and stumbled on the snow-covered turf. After a couple of staggering steps, he regained his balance, then threw the football underhand to tight end Donald Lee to set up a key touchdown.

In the movie, that play will be shown in slow motion, perhaps with cut-ins to Deanna Favre up in the stands.

Should Green Bay beat the Giants, chances are Favre would have the chance to spoil the landmark perfect season currently being forged by the New England Patriots. Now 17-0, the Patriots have become widely reviled (except in Boston, of course) as a bloodless, coldly efficient team that executes its opponents without mercy. They could be Drago, the killer Russian heavyweight, to Favre's Rocky.

I need to rummage through my closet and find my cheesehead.

Right now, Randolph is not a peaceable kingdom

There is something profoundly sad about the spectacle of an institution shooting itself in its institutional foot -- in the case of Randolph College, repeatedly.

Let me say here that I haven't perused the college financial records. I don't know how badly in debt the college might be, or how badly the board of trustees needs to sell off part of the art collection for the school to survive. Nor do I know for sure how Randolph got itself into this situation, or whose fault it was (if anyone's).

I do, however, know Karol Lawson and Ellen Agnew, the director and former director of Randolph's Maier Museum, and how dedicated they were to the museum's collection. The fact that both of them have resigned -- Lawson today, Agnew a few months ago -- tells me a lot.

For this is not just any art collection, but part of what has always given the college its unique identity. Not many schools the size of Randolph have their own museum, much less a collection of American art considered one of the richest in Virginia -- if not the nation.

Moreover, this is Lynchburg's museum, as well. The city has no public space in which to view art, and the Maier and the Daura Gallery have filled that gap. Central Virginia schools regularly bus students to the Maier on field trips, and the museum often hosts concerts and speakers for the public's enjoyment and benefit.

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that selling part of the collection is the only possible avenue left for the college. Either George Bellows' "Men of the Docks" and Edward Hicks' "Peaceable Kingdom" must go, or the school is doomed.

Even if that's a given, it seems obvious to me that the whole affair has been handled badly. The school did everything but send in a SWAT team to remove four paintings on Monday, after notification had been sent out to students, alumni and faculty by e-mail. Right after that, Karol Lawson quit.

The equivocation about the art collection, the notification by e-mail and the unannounced removal (under cover of a bogus bomb scare) all seem to point, rightly or wrongly, in the direction of a guilty conscience.

I feel for Brenda Edson, a former co-worker who is now the director of public relations at Randolph. She's just doing her job, and from what I've seen, she does it well.

And on the surface, she had a point when she told our reporter Christa Desrets: "Those are four pieces out of 3,500 pieces of art."

Unfortunately, two of those pieces -- the Bellows and the Hicks -- were the "faces," if you were, of the whole collection.

It's as if Virginia Tech were to announce it was saving money by eliminating football scholarships, but then reassuring students that they would still have a team on the Division III level.

Not knowing Randolph's finances, I don't have any easy solutions to suggest. The logical step, perhaps, would be to ask the alumni to collectively "buy" these paintings and then donate them back, but the school has only recently gone to these same folks for the money it will take to convert the college into a co-ed institution.

As it stands now, though, the heavy-handed manner with which the school is going about its art sale lays bare a public spectacle of an administration at odds with many of its students, some key staff people, and more than a few alums.

Not the image you want to project when you're trying to grow.

Wasting away a day in Evergreen

I've been a bad blogger. A very bad blogger.

The last time I contributed a post to this space, people were talking about Michael Vick and dogfighting, and that was so ... last August.

But I'm ready to blog my heart out once again, and so I wanted to tell you about the Evergreen Music Festival that my wife Gail and I attended on .... uh, I forget. Last summer.

This event is hosted every year by Ken and Bonnie Swanson, and that is precisely the right word. They host.

As barbecue is dished out from a row of long tables on one part of the lawn and kids and dogs chase each other around the Swansons' eight acres, a charmingly eclectic procession of musicians clomps up the wooden steps to a homemade stage.

Like bluegrass musician/singer Heather Berry, who sounds a little like Allison Krause. And Worm Patterson, who fronted his band wearing a white undershirt. And Jump the Tracks, a group of Longwood College students who transformed themselves from a heavy metal band into a bluegrass ensemble. And the house band, Deja Moo -- featuring, of all people, Ken and Bonnie Swanson.

The music went on until sundown. People brought folding chairs or sat on the grass -- except for Cheryl Lynn, one of the Swansons' long-time friends, who reclined in an overstuffed chair that had been dragged out there for her.

Deja Moo played blues, bluegrass, jug band music, country and "Twist and Shout." As evening fell, the surrounding crickets turned into backup singers.

If it hadn't been for the guy collecting money out by the main road through Evergreen, it would have seemed like a private party. But then again, all the money went to charity.

It all reminded me of stories I've heard about the Colonial days in Virginia, when there was nothing much to do on a weekend but gather all the relatives and neighbors at some central place and play music.

So remember this event next year, and give yourself a little time to find Evergreen. Then, once you do, give yourself the rest of the day. As a present.

More reflections on Michael Vick

I remember seeing a cartoon with a two-part panel.

In the first panel, a young man who has obviously struck it rich is talking to his unkempt parents outside their tiny, falling-down shack in some hillbilly enclave. Now, he tells them with a proud smile, he can buy them the home of their dreams.

The second panel shows him returning, to be confronted with the same falling-down shack, built 100 times bigger.

There's a message in that, and the recent legal problems of Atlanta Falcons' quarterback Michael Vick provides yet another. Both speak to one of the more enduring beliefs in our society, that having lots of money automatically makes you a different (and, theoretically, better) person.

Sure, it happens. Unfortunately, though, most of the evidence is stacked to the contrary. The history of lotteries in this country is full of sad stories about people who won millions, then burned through it in short order.

Athletes provide a particular cautionary tale here in the 21st century. Many of them come from grim inner city neighborhoods or hardscrabble rural areas. Why? Because those settings toughened them, and allowed them to take their natural athletic ability up a notch. Moreover, many come to see their their future as a stark choice between athletic success or poverty.

As a football coach once told me: "The kid from the suburbs would like to make the first team. The kid from the slums has to make the first team."

Again, there are exceptions, but Vick isn't one of them. He grew up in a marginally rough section of Newport News and was defined early on by his athletic ability. He struggled academically at Virginia Tech, and has never come across as a particularly articulate or educated individual. A regular guy, in other words, who happens to possess otherworldly physical talents.

Eventually, those talents earned him multi-millions, but he's still the same person. Is he going to join one of Atlanta's elite social clubs? Is he going to suddenly start hanging around with college presidents and bankers and software savants? Probably not, because he has nothing in common with those people beyond his bank balance, and perhaps their adoration of him.

So who does he choose for friends? The guys he grew up with. Some pro athletes actually transplant their pals from the old neighborhood to wherever they happen to be performing. That's a sweet deal for members of the "entourage," and the party is usually on their old buddy who's made good.

Except that when the jock in question has roots in a rough subculture, that entourage can get out of hand. As in the case of Baltimore Ravens' linebacker Ray Lewis, who nearly spent the rest of his life behind bars after one or more of his "friends" stabbed two men to death outside a nightclub. Or Tennessee Titans' defensive back Adam "Pac Man" Jones, two years removed from West Virginia University, who caught some of the blowback when a bouncer at a Las Vegas strip club was shot and paralyzed by an entourage member.

The rest of us feast on such lurid tales. We love it when an actor or a rock star or a quarterback turns out to have feet of clay and a rap sheet.

What we should be thinking about, though, is our generally skewed perspective on money in general.

We can fantasize, as most of us do, that one day we'll win the lottery or be gifted by a forgotten rich relative or (in the case of many newspaper reporters) write the novel that will become a cash cow.

It's good to dream, but we need to realize that even if our ship does come in, we'll still be who we are. And if we're not ready to properly receive it, our good fortune is apt to fly away.

Especially if that ship turns out to be full of pirates.

Would you like to be President? We can help

C'mon, you know you could do a better job than the guy in the White House.

If only you could come up with the money. If only you could raise your name recognition to a national level. If only your boss would give you a couple of months off to campaign.

The coffee shops and bars and boardrooms of America are filled with people who think they could transform the Oval Office, if only they had the chance. Maybe you're one of those who stare in disbelief at their TV sets and crumple their newspapers at the breakfast table and mutter: "What are they thinking?"

So here's your chance to shine, in a very limited way. Just like God (in the person of Morgan Freeman) gave Jim Carrey the chance to be God of Buffalo in "Bruce Almighty," we at the News & Advance would like to make you President of the United States. Sort of.

Here's the deal. Between now and next January, when the primaries begin, we're offering you the opportunity to tell us how you would fix some of the things you think are wrong with this country. Or bolster what you think is right.

What would you do if you were the man or woman in charge? How would you get us out of Iraq? Or do you think we should stay there? How do you feel about the national debt? Global warming? The separation of church and state?

We'll find a panel of astute people to sort through all of your suggestions and narrow them down to five candidates. Then, we'll give each of those who make the cut the opportunity to deliver a short campaign speech that we'll post on video on our Website. We'll also publish your ideas in the newspaper. Then, we'll throw it open to a general vote of all our readers.

The finalists will not be chosen on the slant of their ideas -- we will hold no prejudice toward left, right or center suggestions. Indeed, it will be a much better election if we have an ideological range. The key will be whether your suggestions are clearly thought out and presented. Nor do you have to be an Ivy League graduate -- common sense will count just as much as an advanced degree.

So think about this, and take your time -- you've got several months. We'll also probably reward the person who's elected in some way, although that's still in the talking stages. You can e-mail us your ideas, or mail them.

If you'll notice the previous blog on this site, I've thrown out a few of the many issues you could discuss. I'm sure you have your own.

The only rules are these:

1. We want you to suggest a platform of your own, not simply criticize what's being done now. Pretend that there's a vacancy at the top, and you're starting from scratch.

2. We want you to be serious. Any suggestions like "Give everyone a million dollars" or "Legalize crime" will be chuckled at, then discarded.

3. Stick to national and international issues, not state and local.

So give it a shot. Who knows? Maybe you can even make it onto the national ballot from here.

Some issues politicans avoid at any cost

I think we can see where this is going. The 2008 presidential election is going to be all about Iraq (with maybe Iran and Afganistan thrown in), to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Of course, a lot can happen between now and then, but chances are the same vitally important domestic issues are going to be ignored yet again.

That's probably because they are difficult, prickly head-scratchers that don't lend themselves to TV soundbites. They may, however, lend themselves to solutions, if we'd just talk about it.

It seems to me that we often squander the true value of our elections. Besides deciding (in theory, at least) who is most fit for an office, they also open the floor for debate on the pressing questions of the day. Locally, it might be whether this section of a county should have sewer service or that section should be re-zoned. Nationally, the stakes are much higher.

All too often, though, debate is not what happens. The candidates either attack each other personally, or drone on about how they'll never raise your taxes. The things that really matter are blown away by the hurricane of hot air.

So what does really matter here in America, in 2007? That's a subjective question, and your list may well differ from mine. But here's a starting point:

1. Health care. Sure, the candidates will talk about health care, but most likely in an abstract, pie-in-the-sky way that doesn't take in the realities "on the ground," as the popular saying goes.

Here's what I always wonder about: Why should it be the responsibility of the your employer to take care of your health care?

Think about it. Doing the same job, I would get one salary from the Amherst New Era Progress, another from the News & Advance, another from the New York Times. Those salaries reflect the resources each newspaper has available. In terms of my medical coverage, however, it would cost all of them essentially the same.

Put simply, this concept that business should shoulder the burden of health care is killing small companies.

So if business don't do it, who should? Maybe a coalition of some sort between government and insurance companies, throwing out a net that ultimately covers everyone. But any decision that's made has to involve doctors, hospitals and pharmacuetical companies. Instead of simply lobbying the government, these groups need to interact with it.

Of course, any improvements in the health care mess will mean ....

2. Taxes. We have the war in Iraq. We have a crisis in health care. The infrastructure is sagging (the Minnesota bridge collapse, case in point). We have an endangered Social Security system.

If you're a couple sitting at the kitchen table with your bills strewn about you, and you see red ink seeping onto the tablecloth, you're going to say: "Hey, we've got to come up with some more money from somewhere." Or, you might say: "We really need to cut down on our spending."

Americans have been convinced that we don't need to do either. Just put it on the national credit card, and we'll deal with it later. We accept financial strategies from our governments that would appall us personally.

We don't resist taxes because we're stingy -- Americans are among the most generous people on earth. The problem is, no one ever seems to equate taxes to services in any sort of direct way. Moreover, those of us in the lower and middle class brackets see the more fortunate gleefully driving Brinks trucks through gaping loopholes in the tax code on their way to the bank.

I think if a tax system were truly fair, Americans would buy into it (if not necessarily with a smile).

3. Social Security. A lot of us have a system in which our checking and savings accounts are joined at the hip. If you overdraw your checking acocunt, money is automatically drawn from savings to cover the deficit. The federal government has that, too -- the checking account is called the budget, the fallback is Social Security. They just don't tell you about it.

4. Prison/drug law reform. Again, politicians have failed us miserablly here. Besides "I'll never raise your taxes," the most popular mantra is "I'm going to be tough on crime." Common sense goes out the window. The fact is, putting someone in jail for making a poor lifestyle decision (i.e., possesing drugs) makes about as much sense as busting an overweight person in the McDonald's line, or hauling a workaholic out of his cubicle.

Sure, certain drugs are bad for you, but filling our prisons with young people who then become a drain on society doesn't seem a very good way to deal with thhat.

This is, like most of the problems we ignore, very complicated. Why not make the emphasis on getting people off drugs, thereby drying up the demand? Otherwise, we have the problem of convincing a 17-year-old with no future that even though he's making $1,500 a week, there are better alternatives. Which leads to ...

5. Jobs. Our society used to offer "meat and potatoes" employment, the kind you could get with a high school diploma and make a decent living from. Most of them were in manufacturing of some sort, and you could make a good living from them. Here in Lynchburg, you could work at the Lynchburg foundry, the shoe factory, the textile mill. Now, the choices seem to be hi-tech or fast food. Government can't solve this problem, but it's certainly something that needs to be addressed.

6. An alienated minority. We can ignore the plight (and, yes, the attitude) of the disaffected youth culture in the inner cities only at our peril -- and theirs.

Hot pursuits and bad endings

High speed police chases. Let's talk about this a minute.

It's certainly a timely subject, because hot pursuit has killed both a chaser and a chasee in Central Virginia so far this year -- a sheriff's deputy in Campbell County, a 21-year-old driving without a license in Bedford.

And the obvious question has to be: Were these pursuits that ultimately turned tragic really necessary in the first place?

For better or worse, vehicular pursuit has become embedded in our culture -- what would an action movie be without at least one car chase? Perhaps because of that, it's something many men (and, increasingly, women) fantasize about.

In real life, though, who are the people most likely to put the pedal to the metal and try to flee the cops?

1. They could be a dangerous criminal, someone on the FBI's Most Wanted List. A rapist, a terrorist, an armed robber. They could be, but it's highly unlikely -- this is a big country, and there aren't enough dangerous criminals on the lam to go around.

2. They could be fleeing from the scene of a crime, like a bank heist. Still unlikely.

3. They could be driving a stolen car. Now, we're getting more into the neighborhood of probability.

4. They could be driving on a suspended license, or unwilling to acquire the extra points that might get their license suspended.

5. They could be drunk.

The last category is the one I find most disturbing.

Let's consider this. You've got a person the police are trying to catch because they feel he is a danger to other motorists. So what sense does it make to then force this person -- whose depth perception, vision and judgement may already be impaired -- to drive at higher and higher speeds?

That's what happened when a drunk driver slammed head-on into a car containing the Barrick family on Waterlick Road a few months back.

My position on this is that I am a fellow traveler on the public highways (the Barrick accident happened on a road I drive every day). Sure, it makes me uncomfortable to think of wasted drivers sharing those highways with me, but the thought of a wasted driver going 100 miles an hour ups the ante considerably.

When you put the worst case scenarios side-by-side, it goes something like this:

If the police let the person go, the worst case scenario is that he or she will escape to drive drunk, or on a suspended license, another day.

If the police instigate a chase, the worst case scenario is that someone dies.

There are exceptions, naturally. The police are almost obligated to pursue a fleeing robber, or a criminal believed to be a public menace. But in the case of the ordinary citizen with a less-than-ordinary driving record, chances are the in-car camera has already snapped a photo of the license plate and videotaped the fleeing car. True, it's not as exciting to go by the person's home or place of work the next day to make the arrest, but it's probably a lot safer. And innocent people don't get hurt.

Based on events such as have happened in Central Virginia this year, localities all over the U.S. have decided that routinely embarking on these 90-mph thrill rides simply isn't worth the risk.
To me, that only makes sense.

ER's test the patience of patients

I used to work in a hospital emergency room, although it seems like 100 years ago.

It was back in the mid-70s, in Lexington County, SC, and I imagine the same challenges we faced there are still bedeviling ER personnel today.

This was, I always tell people, the perfect preparation for a later job in journalism. The hours were uncertain, the pay wasn't great, and I had to ask personal questions of people who didn't want to answer them.

Even with all that, though, the Lexington County General Hospital ER fulfilled my No. 1 requirement of any job, that every day at work be different.

We had shootings and stabbings and car wrecks. We had close encounters with chainsaws and fire ants and fish hooks and vicious dogs (as well as vicious husbands and boyfriends). At the same time, we also had a steady flow of patients who probably shouldn't have been there.

My favorite exchange between nurse and patient at that hospital was with a man who came in for treatment of what used to be called, in polite company, a "social disease." This was duly noted on the chart that I, as the primary conduit of information, filled out and placed in the window behind me.

With this individual, "patient" was a misnomer. He became increasingly agitated as later arrivals were treated ahead of him (never mind that they had suffered heart attacks and seizures), and finally he stalked over to the nurse's window and said: "Can I please be seen by someone? I'm a very busy man."

The nurse, an older woman who had seen it all, looked at his chart and replied dryly: "Yes. I can see that."

I thought about all this when I read Cynthia Pegram's story a couple of Sundays ago about long waits for emergency room patients. At Lynchburg General, one of the busiest ER's in the state, the median time before treatment was more than three hours.

The centerpiece of this article was a cautionary tale about a woman who was referred to the ER by her doctor with a possible urinary tract infection. She and her husband first walked through the doors at 1 p.m. on a Sunday and didn't leave until 13 hours later.

Some doctors can perform open-heart surgery in a lot less time than that. Put another way, that's 13 episodes of "ER," back-to-back. And in the end, the woman was told: "Just keep taking the medication you've been taking."

The couple made a point of telling Cynthia that they had no complaints about the quality of care, or the compassion with which they were treated. But 13 hours?

Here's the problem, I think. Running a hospital emergency room is like trying to operate a fast food place and a fine-dining restaurant in the same space.

Some people are there because they'd be dead otherwise. Some are there because their doctors told them to go there. And others, with more minor complaints, are there because they don't have any other place to go.

When you try to funnel all this diverse humanity through one portal, it can get crazy. The usual rule of "First come, first served" doesn't apply when you're waiting for three stitches in the end of your finger and ambulance attendants suddenly burst through the door bearing someone who has been struck by lightning. That's what happened to the woman in Cynthia's story -- she kept being trumped by worse-case scenarios.

It seems to me, however, that there must be some logical way to deal with this. How about reserving one area of the ER for the more routine cases, and let that operate indepedently of the trauma and cardiac areas?

Moreover, isn't there some way of determining how serious something might be before that person gets to the ER? Perhaps the problem is fear of lawsuits, but couldn't some of this be handled by a nurse practitioner, even over the telephone?

Emergency room visits are never pleasant, and they're not cheap. But maybe they could at least be shorter.

There was more to Tammy Faye than makeup

I never met Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, who died of cancer last week, but I feel as though I have.

In 1987, I made several trips down to Fort Mill, SC to cover the breakup of Jim and Tammy Bakker's PTL Club and Heritage USA amusement park and chronicle the Rev. Jerry Falwell's part in that sad saga.

Nearly 20 years later, I heard Tammy Sue Bakker, the couple's daughter, speak at the Lighthouse Church in Lynchburg.

In between, like everybody else, I was alternately outraged and amused by the flood of publicity that turned Tammy Faye in a caricature.

It was her makeup, for one thing. She wore lots of it, as everyone knows, and a popular T-shirt from the late 1980s consisted of random blobs of various colors and the words: "I ran into Tammy Faye at the mall."

She cried a lot, was another thing. She cried when she was happy, when she was sad, when she felt the rush of the spirit take her over.

Of course, a lot of people -- including state and federal law enforcement authorities -- thought that the Bakkers were crooks. I was one of them, and I've often reprised a classic pronouncement Tammy Fay once made during a healing service.

Looking out over a vast field of believers, she blurted out "Someone out there has just been healed of cancer, and they didn't even know they had it."

Now, wasn't that special?

The interesting thing to me, though, when I visited Heritage USA, was how loyal many of the Bakkers' followers remained to the couple even after the bad news hit the fan.

"Jim and Tammy would never do anything to hurt us," I remember one woman telling me.

Actually, they wound up hurting each other. Jim had a fling with a church secretary named Jessica Hahn (who was so traumatized by the experience that she went on to pose for Playboy), and the couple was eventually divorced. Tammy Faye then married Roe Messner, another PTL figure, who was later convicted of financial wrongdoing himself.

Tammy Faye was never convicted of anything, though, and the arc of her life continued -- from evangelism to pop culture icon. She appeared on several reality shows, occupied Larry King's guest chair on a number of occasions, and became a sort of latter-day Judy Garland, adopted enthusiastically by the gay community.

Even her lingering death from cancer became a public spectacle. Periodically, Tammy Faye would appear on Larry King Live to report of the progress of the disease.

So what did all this mean?

To me, Tammy Faye's career provided an object lesson in the fraility of humanity. By all accounts, she and Jim started out on the right path, only to be lured into the underbrush by the onslaught of riches that suddenly came their way.

The Bakkers showed the world that it is always more advisable to follow the message and not the messengers. In the end, though, Tammy Faye managed to fight her way through the notoriety and the silliness to emerge as a redeemed and triumphant figure.

"She's a good person," Tammy Sue Bakker said of her mom last year in her visit to Lynchburg. "She really is."

I believe her.

Now, it's a federal case: Who let the dogs out?

A throwaway line in the Paul Simon song "You Can Call Me Al" goes something like this: "Get these mutts away from me -- I don't find this stuff amusing any more."

Michael Vick can certainly relate. Or, he might find an appropriate theme song in that late '90s hit by the Baha Men: "Who Let the Dogs Out?" Even if the Atlanta Falcons' quarterback isn't suspended by the league, I'll bet he hears that blasting over the PA system in every city on the road.

Vick hasn't been proven guilty of participating in (and bankrolling) illegal dogfighting, of course -- but he has been proven self-destructive, by a long series of embarrassing incidents. I'm not sure what it is about the Tidewater area, but his problems remind me a lot of Allen Iverson, the Hampton-born basketball star, who also seemed determined to hang onto his tough guy, pseudo-gangsta image even after the Philadelphia 76ers made him a multi-millionaire.

In recent years, Iverson appears to have matured. Vick, 27, may have lost his chance.

Tuesday's federal indictment against Vick and three alleged co-conspirators (including a guy named Pernell Peach) was not only damning, but grisly. At one point, it accuses Peach of electrocuting the loser in one dog fight with Vick looking on. If true, that's not going to go over well with PETA.

Perhaps the hardest of Vick's statements to believe is the one about his relatives and friends staging dog fights at the Suffolk County property the quarterback owned without his knowledge.
("Quick -- Michael's coming! Let's hide the 50 pit bulls in this closet!")

That would be like Osama bin Laden saying that he thought those Afghan terrorist training centers were really summer camps for disadvantaged kids.

Even worse, Vick repeated his blanket denial to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in April.

Unlike the federal court system, the NFL doesn't have to try Vick with a jury of his peers. If it's determined that he's become enough of an embarassment to the league, he can be suspended. Period.

Either way, this is a huge problem for Vick's team, which has built its offense, its salary structure and its marketing plan around Vick's twinkling feet and howitzer of an arm.

Falcons' owner Arthur Blank has hung in there with Vick for several years despite the fact that the former Virginia Tech star has only rarely fulfilled his enormous promise on the field, has embarrassed him at every turn, and was openly defiant of previous coach Jim Mora. Mora's replacement, Bobby Petrino, was brought in from the University of Louisville largely because it was thought that he can both coach and control Atlanta's maverick star. Oops.

Now, the Falcons have a huge hunk of dog doo-doo on their collective shoe -- and a backup quarterback, Joey Harrington, with less than All-Pro credentials.

It couldn't be more fitting that Atlanta's training camp will open in August -- the Dog Days.

Reflections on the Peace Mom's visit

I have a lot of respect for Cindy Sheehan. Increasingly, though, I'm starting to wonder what she's thinking.

When she started her activism against the Iraq War, she was in firm possession of the high moral ground. She was coming at the issue as a grieving mother anguishing over the thought that her son may have died for nothing. In that role, she earned the sympathy of a lot of Americans who may not have agreed with her political stance.

I don't believe the skeptics who now say Sheehan is putting herself "out there" just to get publicity, or as part of some scheme to line her purse. No one ever heard of Cindy Sheehan before her son Casey was killed in action in 2004, and there can be no doubt that her grief was initially what drove her.

What I wonder about is the path she's taken since.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with Sheehan broadening her efforts and becoming a spokesperson against the war. My problem is with the way she's doing it.

I saw it all too often during the Vietnam era -- the "peace" crowd increasingly circling the wagons, lashing out in irrelevant directions and spending a lot of time congratulating each other.

This is not how you win an argument. You win an argument by addressing the people who disagree with you, and trying to convince them.

One of our biggest problems as a nation, I believe, is that we tend to get tangled up in ideology. Come to think of it, that's probably the biggest problem of all nations -- it's part of the human condition.

What this does, though, is keep us from focusing on a problem in isolation. The Iraq War is not necessarily a Democratic, Republican, liberal or conservative issue. It is what it is, irrespective of our politics, and we need to take a clear-eyed, objective look at it. The same with global warming and tax reform and prison reform and all the other issues we've managed to politicize.

But back to Cindy Sheehan. In my humble opinion, she's getting scattered. Instead of focusing all her energy on convincing other Americans that the war in Iraq is a bad idea, she's now focusing on getting President Bush and Vice-President Cheney impeached.

Another bad idea, it would seem to me. For one thing, it would take a mighty convincing case against Bush and Cheney to conjure up the two-thirds majority it would take to get them out of office. Impeachment is easy -- a simple majority. Following through is excruciatingly difficult.

Just as the Republicans did it to Bill Clinton -- knowing they didn't have a two-thirds majority -- an impeachment of Bush and Cheney would just be a distraction at a time when we don't need to be distracted. And again, as with Clinton, what is the point of trying to impeach leaders as their term winds down to a close?

Moreover, if you make the issue a personal attack on Bush and Cheney, you open an argument that can't be won. For the most part, people either love them or they hate them, and it's hard to imagine that anything Cindy Sheehan says is going to change that. So rather than trying to make the point that the current administration is stupid, or evil, it makes more sense just to take the position that they're wrong, and let history take care of the final judgement.

Sure, it can be argued that the Iraq War is part of a larger problem in American foreign policy, and that we need to start viewing the world differently. But making trips to Venezuela (where leader Hugo Chavez is openly defiant and contemptuous of the U.S.) and Cuba, as Sheehan has done, isn't going to help change hearts and minds.

It's the Jane Fonda mistake all over again -- her trip to North Vietnam cost her any shred of credibility she may have had among moderates.

Having said all that, I think it's exciting that Sheehan is stopping here (I'm speaking as a newspaper person here), and I hope a lot of people turn out to hear her, whether they agree with her or not. Whenever we stop freely exchanging ideas, we stop being America.

If Cindy Sheehan won't do it, I will

An open letter to those who still support the Iraq War:

First of all, I admire your perserverence. It's not easy to hold to an idea when it seems to be falling apart around you. Nor am I assuming that you're necessarily wrong, although I happen to think you are.

Of course, what do I know, besides what I read, and hear, and see on TV? I haven't taken a "fact-finding" mission to Iraq, like so many of our elected officials. I don't know a soul over there, although I have interviewed some returning soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Like you, I have to rely ultimately on guesswork and gut feelings.

I would like to make a couple of points, though -- and let me add that I don't consider myself either a liberal or a conservative. I won't bore you with a checklist of my positions on a laundry list of issues, but trust me on this: The older I get, the more I realize that there are virtues and flaws on both sides of the ideological divide.

1. Wars are not automatically noble causes. Some are necessary, some are not. Some are motivated by morality, others by greed.

As anyone who knows me well will tell you, I have an enormous respect for the American soldier. My father was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, my mother worked for the military during World War II, and I grew up in that culture. Over the years, I have written innumerable stories about soldiers who did their duty. A soldier serves where he or she is told to serve, period.

Still, we Americans have a right to question whether a war that is costing billions of dollars of our tax money is a good thing. That's what differentiates us from a lot of other countries, where citizens don't have that right. What irks me is when people use the argument that "You wouldn't be able to say those things in Iran" to convince others not to say them. You can't have it both ways.

Anyway, just because our military is deployed somewhere doesn't mean that the officials who sent them there are right. And if they're wrong, it's no reflection on the troops, as long as they follow the general laws of humanity. They're still brave.

The just wars, by and large, are obvious. Otherwise, a war is very much like a joke -- if you have to spend a lot of time explaining it to people, it's probably not going to work.

2. A lot of this is about Israel.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing, necessarily. They are, after all, a longtime ally.

Think about it, though. Suppose Iraq did have "weapons of mass destruction." They have no delivery system, and hardly any Air Force. In order to use those weapons against us, they would have to ship them here by UPS. Or smuggle them in -- but they could do that anyway, from anywhere. Occupying Iraq won't stop that threat.

Same with Iran. They are really no danger to us, in the traditional sense. But both Iran and a radical Iraq would be a huge threat to Israel, which they could reach with those weapons. That, it would seem to me, is what we're worried about.

It is also about oil, but I won't go there.

3. We need to start learning our geography.

I remember Alan Jackson's poignant song after 9-11, where he said "I'm just a simple man. I don't know the difference between Iraq and Iran."

I don't see that as a good thing. I get the sense with a lot of you who strongly support the war that you see all of the Middle Eastern countries as an indistinguishable mass, even though they are actually very different. The Iranians, for example, are not Arabs. I don't know enough about these places as I should, but I know that much.

Reflexively attacking Iraq because of Sept. 11 makes about as much sense as if we had attacked China after Pearl Harbor, arguing, "Why not? They're all Orientals, aren't they?"

Given that logic, and the fact that the majority of the hijackers were Saudis, wouldn't it have made more sense to bomb Saudi Arabia?

4. Who are these guys?

George Bush has gotten a lot of flak for his "Mission Accomplished" pronouncement, but in a sense, he was right. We took over the country, which we now occupy, and not only ousted its leader, but had him hung.

It's the aftermath that's the problem. In Vietnam, we at least knew who we were fighting. In Iraq, there are a dozen different groups fighting each other -- and us, because we're in the way. There are no hills to take, no beaches to land on, no cities to liberate. We have been reduced to a peacekeeping force, as well as a sitting target for a host of radical militias.

The question then, is not really "How do we win the war in Iraq?" We handled the war quite effectively -- it's the peace that's getting badly screwed up.

5. What do these people want?

They aren't all mentally disturbed, although I have to think at least some of them are (agreeing to strap explosives to your body and blow yourself up just to kill a few civilians is in a marketplace would seem to be certifiable). So what's going on in Iraq, as chaotic as it seems, must be for a reason.

Religion might motivate the rank and file, but probably not the leaders. They have an agenda, so what is it? That doesn't mean we should agree with it, but it might be nice to know.

By the way, I don't understand what President Bush is talking about when he says "they" will "follow us here."

They certainly aren't going to invade us with their armies, because that would be like the Concord Little League All-Stars challenging the New York Yankees. So "following us" must mean terrorism.

I think most people in other countries, especially developing countries, envy us for our wealth but would love to climb aboard our gravy train themselves. What the opposition in the Middle East hates us for, as far as I can surmise, is because we support Israel and because we're occupying Iraq.

5. How can we end this honorably and with a minumum of bloodshed?

If I knew that, I wouldn't be working in Lynchburg, VA -- I could sell that knowledge for millions.

Obviously, the perfect solution would be to have to Iraqis fight their own battles. The problem is, their government seems too polarized and paralyzed to be able to do that.

I do think, with our military clout, that we could keep the surrounding countries from piling on if we left. But we couldn't keep the violence from escalating within Iraq, and we'd have to be willing to accept that.

Anyway, this is just what I think -- take it or leave it. I'd also love to hear any arguments for remaining in Iraq that don't include the words "liberal scum." Send them along, and I'll print them.

Do we have two City Councils?

First of all, I don't care what Darin Gerdes' religious or political affiliation may be.

I don't care if he's a fundamentalist Baptist, a Hindu or a Unitarian; a Rush Limbaugh conservative or a Michael Moore liberal. That's not the point. What bothers me is the manner in which he was recently appointed to the Lynchburg School Board by City Council.

I think it should be bother you, too.

Whatever their philosophies may be, the seven members of City Council were elected to work together for the good of the city.

That's not to say that they can't disagree on some matters. That's inevitable, and probably healthy. A council operating in total lockstep would be kind of scary.

But here's what apparently happened with the substitution of Gerdes for Tom Webb on the School Board. Council members Michael Gillette and Ceasor Johnson were out of town at the time the matter came up for a vote. Although two of the remaining five members wanted to delay the vote until a full council could be assembled, the other three overrode them, voted anyway, and appointed Gerdes.

Obviously, the business of council can't come to a screeching halt whenever someone is absent -- these are all busy people with other obligations, and that happens all the time.

In the case of the Gerdes appointment, though, it seems painfully transparent that the reason this was rushed through was because council members Jeff Helgeson, Joe Seiffert and Scott Garrett knew that their guy would not be confirmed by a vote of the full council.

Sure, this had been delayed once before, but what was the hurry? This was a School Board appointment, and this is July, when public school business essentially grinds to a halt.

I find it disturbing that the board has become so fragmented that one faction decided to act independently of other members. I would find it just as bothersome if Gillette, Johnson and Joan Foster had waited until Helgeson and Garrett left town to re-appoint Webb.

This episode also seems to speak to the communication (or lack of it) between board members. Wouldn't have been a good idea for Gillette and Johnson to ask the other members not to decide on this matter until they returned?

Oh, wait -- they did.

Why does everybody hate the gas pump cop?

If you ever stop for gas at a self-serve station (and about 99 percent of us do), you have to feel sorry for the guy whose picture is emblazoned on most of the pumps here in Virginia.

He's wearing a state police uniform, complete with Smoky the Bear hat, and he's staring grimly out at us and saying: "Drive off without paying, and it may be the last time you drive!"

Or something like that. (I don't have a gas pump in front of me at the moment).

Really, the gas pump officer is just trying to do us a favor. He's reminding us that while it might seem like a prudent cost-saving measure to avoid spending that $40 to fill your tank (after all, all oil companies are pirates), such a rash act may wind up costing you your drivers' license -- after you are run down by a high-speed chase and TASERED and pepper-sprayed to within an inch of your life.

Of course, if you lost your license, you wouldn't need to buy any more gas, so maybe it's a tradeoff.

At any rate, though, people seem to hate the guy on the gas pump. I've started keeping track, and the last 10 times I've stopped for gas, I've noticed that his face has been either been obliterated with magic marker, slashed to ribbons with a pen knife, or studded with wads of used gum.

The poor guy. Whether he's a real state trooper or just a model who donned a uniform for the advertisement, he's probably on a psychiatrist's couch by now.

In a way, I know how he feels. My newspaper once decided to put my picture on the sides of newspaper racks, but that experiment was short-lived. Somebody shot one of them.

Do our kids need us that much?

While I was visiting my mother in New York last month, she told me a story.

"When we lived in Wisconsin, you used to go across the street and play in the schoolyard," she said. "One day, the kindergarten teacher stopped by the house. She said, 'Did you know that Darrell has been going to class over here? He just invited himself in.'"

Shortly thereafter, I was officially enrolled in kindergarten at age four.

A cute story, I thought, until I pondered for a moment.

Wait! I was four years old, and my Mom didn't know where I was? What about pedophiles, psychopaths, rabid animals and trolls? This was, after all, the state that later produced Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer, who became infamous for eating people.

"You were with the other kids," she said, "so I knew you were alright."

When I returned, I began asking friends around my age how much parental supervision they remembered as children. Almost invariably, their recollections involved interacting with other kids in an adultless world, especially in the summertime.

Back then, parents didn't barricade their kids inside the house -- they kicked them outside.

"Go play with your friends," they'd say. "Be back for dinner."

No wonder all those stay-at-home moms were able to maintain their sanity.

So has society devolved since then? Is it really all that dangerous for kids? I wonder.

The Virginia State Police Website on child safety warns: "Don't leave your child unattended in a car, even for a minute."

There are two ways of looking at this. One is to say: "The odds on my child being snatched up by somebody are very long, indeed, so I'm just going to go on about my business." Or, you might say: "Sure, it doesn't happen very often, but one time is too many if it's my child."

Now, if a parent has his or her attention diverted even for an instant from a child who then wanders off, the news stories always make a major point of it.

Granted, it's lunacy to leave your young children in the house alone and, say, go out to an all-night disco. But we act today as if the really responsible thing to do would be tether your offpsring to you at all times with a stout rope, lest something awful happen to them and you be blamed by the local TV anchorperson.

Child molesters, you know.

Moreover, we have become terrified that our children might come home from school and find no adults there. If that happens, then they're "out on the street" with, God forbid, their friends.

Maybe if we gave our kids a little more space, they might develop more maturity more quickly.

Anybody have any thoughts on this?

A Goode time to explain myself

The theme of my July 2 column was "What does it mean to be an American?" and included this line: "To Rep. Virgil Goode, apparently, it means speaking English and reading the Bible (reminiscent of another Congressman who once blurted out, in the midst of a floor debate on multi-culturalism, 'If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me!')"

A reader named Tucker Watkins took exception to the Goode reference, and wrote:

"Dear Mr. Laurant:

"Your comment on Congressman Virgil Goode was a cheap shot at best.

"Why didn’t you write a real story and call him and ask rather than give us your biased opinion?

"Your article would have been much better had you called Virginians of many political stripes and asked them what it meant to them to be an American. That might have given us all words of inspiration to remember on this wonderful holiday.

"Instead you took the easy way out and wrote something that will best be soon forgotten.

"If you took the time to get to know Virgil, you would find he is an amazing student of American history who cares a great deal about this country and feels that being an American is very special. It is sad for you and the readers of the newspaper that you have not made that effort.

"I would hope that in the future you learn a great deal more about your subject matter before putting your pen to paper."

I respect the opinion of Mr. Watkins, who seemed quite knowledgeable when I talked with him on the phone. (He is, in fact, a former Fifth District Republican chairman). But it also gives me the opportunity to explain the difference between a news story, an editorial and a column.

A news story is supposed to provide all the facts (or as many facts as the reporter can scare up) and, if it's an issue story, offer an opportunity for both sides to be heard.

An editorial injects the added element of the writers' opinion, but is still usually backed by factual evidence. In this case, though, it is not considered essential to contact both sides.

Which brings us to the column, which is sort of the newspaper version of what Jay Leno and Rush Limbaugh do. Our goal is to inform, but also to entertain, and I'm sure neither of the aforementioned on-air personalities call up every politician or celebrity about whom they make a throwaway comment.

I actually have spent some time with Virgil Goode, and have found him exceedingly affable. I once tailed him and one of his aides on Election Day, and he went out of his way to make sure I was able to make connections with them.

However, he's also a public figure, and his comments about an incoming Black Muslim Congressman using the Koran for swearing in were not only public but Virgil-initated.

Do I really think that's how he defines being an American? Probably not. I was just having a little fun at his expense (along with, I might add, a lot of other pundits around the world), although there was at least a kernel of truth there.

I do find it a little sad that we seem to have lost the ability to kid each other. These days, whenever a columnist or humorist uses politics as a jumping-off point, he or she is immediately branded as a mean-spirited zealot trying to advance some ideological agenda.

When I write a column, I'm not trying to depict myself as an expert. I'm not trying to browbeat anyone. I'm simply the guy on the next diner stool who's saying: "You know, here's what I think about this ..."

If I can stimulate some discussion and make people think -- or even laugh -- I've done my job.

So don't take me so seriously. I don't, and I doubt very seriously that Virgil Goode does. The Congressman, I guarantee, has a very thick skin.

Having said all that, though, don't be surprised if I take Tucker Watkins' suggestion next Fourth of July. It's a good idea.