Economic Manifestation

I don't know how the rest of the country is managing to tread water in this sea of economic turbulence, but here in eastern Nawf Cack I've noticed a couple of trends. The most notable being the escalation of  crime. It usually involves drugs. If not, then it's a violent crime committed against a family member (but even then it may still be about drugs). It seems more people have been shot this year than any other. Some of the victims happened to exist in the fringes of the darkness that is a perpetrator's realm. Like the two people killed earlier this month in downtown Greenville who were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Most victims have immersed themselves in that darkness, rolled the bones every day, and eventually came up with snake eyes. Arguably, this demographic favors the young, black male. Thus, many of these, in their over-sized clothes and hats are stereotyped. I spoke with an African-American city council member the other day after a meeting with downtown business owners. They were trying to come up with solutions to the violence inherent with a large cluster of alcohol-serving establishments in proximity to a university. She was upset at how her nephew, who dresses like a thug is treated like a thug. She insisted he is not.  She is one of several narrow-minded politicians in this county who are quite comfortable with their head in the sand.

The other trend I noticed today while driving an hour south to cover a news event. Yard sales. They have cropped up this season like clovers. They come in all sizes too. Some you can wander through the entire yard and into the house, some are simply a man leaning against the back of his car with two items laid out in front of him with a sign that reads: "YARD SALE". I must have come across at least 30 of these "sales" in my hour drive. People are trying to get rid of all the crap they've collected. Whether it was useful at some point, or it was handed down, it no longer has a use in their lives, and their hoping it can be handy to somebody.

Some sell personal items, some sell euphoric diversions. One is benevolent, the other is not.

Flea Powder, anyone?

One of the many axioms thrown around in the South is:"You take the fleas with the dog." In my line of work as a news photographer, we occasionally come across people who either don't know what the purpose of local news is, or don't care. And if they can convince a green newsdesk to send someone out to their "event", then they can abuse the fourth estate, and they win.

Thursday night, by the assumed power of a "press release", I was sent to cover an "event". I don't know what the desk was thinking after hopefully reading said release, but they thought it was some kind of seminar, freeing people of financial burdens. "Leveling the playing field and getting rid of financial illiteracy, " was the mantra in the release and the female in charge of the seminar. And she said that exact phrase six times in the 20 minutes I spent there. The desk assumed it would be a well-attended event. It wasn't.

My plan was to arrive 15 minutes early so I could get my sound bite, then shoot the seminar and leave when I have my 40 seconds of video. There were four people with this group, and only one person showed up to see what it was about. It was to get people to pay these people to have a "personal concierge" at their beck and call, 24/7. If one had questions of any kind, all they have to do is call their personal assistant and they would do the digging and get back to you in minutes. It was a get rich quick scheme for the person who wrote the "release". So there I was in a conference room with these four people watching this one person look at a video presentation on a laptop. Feeling like a cheap whore, I started walking out. The leader stopped me at the door and wanted my personal cell number. Nice try, but HELL NO.

 

In this small TV market, with VERY little to feed a hungry news machine, our desk will take just about anything at face value. So yes, there are actually two problems here. But, there are fleas that some dogs just can't shake.

Every rose has its thorn

In addition to the title of this entry, the source of the title I find fitting. There is a song by the same name by the band Poison.  I don't know what the song is about, but my reference is downtown Greenville after the sun sets. There is a prickly poison inherent in the atmosphere of a bar scene, and it doesn't have to be adjacent to a college campus to be cursed with that toxin. Most nights, patrons can dance and move through their rose garden and never get stuck by a thorn. Sometimes, though, the thorns come out. Exhibit A: a man walks into a bar, (yeah, yeah,) gets thrown out of bar, drives by the bar, fires gun at people standing in front of bar, two of them die. WHY? When this person is found, he should not be put in jail for the rest of his life. That is getting off the hook. He took two lives, he should spend the rest of his life trying to make it up to those whose lives were affected by their loss. This is better than my first reaction: when found, shoot him in the head. That's the emotional reaction, the rational reaction is one of restitution. 

Big hair bands ruled the airwaves and the bars when I was in my college years in Okinawa, Japan. For me and my fellow Marine Corps friends, the bars were the places to go because at that age there was some inherent urge to alter your normal state of consciousness and live life as if that night was your last.  That motive is organic to the age. I've done things others would not, but none of those things was as serious as firing a weapon at someone. If someone made my blood boil, I would usually tell myself that that person is not worth the trouble; that they would get their appropriate punishment at some point, and I would turn and go on with my life. Sometimes, though, I would let my inability to confront get the best of me and I would later become a little destructive. Nothing major, just enough to make me feel better. But afterwards I would feel worse because I damaged someone's property. That story is probably played out today, but now we have people who were obviously brought up with a daring feeling of invulnerability, and without the emotional burden of a conscience. The answer to keeping the thorns away is a moving target. And it may not be possible.

With one exception, the 12-pack or so of people we spoke to about the events (reporter Arthur Mondale and myself,) all said the same thing: the high they get when indulging in the rose, outweighs the risk of getting stuck by the thorns.  Or, as the eloquent writer, Neil Peart believes, Danger + Risk = Fun. The amount of danger in an activity, plus the amount of risk you want to put into it, equals the amount of fun you will get out of it.