MountainMornings

Make it stop! Let’s admit it. We all want it to stop; every day a new allegation about some older white guy sexually harassing a younger woman.

You would think we are a country born of Puritans who would impeach a sitting president for a consensual affair with an intern. But hey, it was a BJ in the Oval Office. And she was an adult with a proclivity for berets. And anyway, he admitted it, and apologized, right?

This was a part of the conversation I was having with my hair stylist, Chase, this week. What we didn’t know at the time, was that another crazy white man whipped out his semi-automatic rifle in California and fired at an elementary school, killing five people. Like many mass murderers, he first killed his wife. When news started to trickle out, I was taking a selfie of my new hairdo. Oblivious, I drove through the Gulch and met Bob for lunch.

My brother’s daughter teaches music in a California elementary school. Her two beautiful little girls attend the same school. Initially, I panicked. Then I learned that all praise was going to the school secretary for locking down the building so fast. Or God, with thoughts and prayers. I’m so sick of thoughts and prayers. Praise Jesus, all those “active shooter” drills have paid off!

Chase and I like to discuss how organized religion has ruined many a family gathering. He grew up Southern Baptist, never feeling accepted, while I talk about Catholics and Jews. I’m sure everybody and their grandparents will be talking about sex around this Thanksgiving table, after they hold hands and thank God for our abundance. The whole school shooting thing will be simply a footnote, next to Aunt Mary’s oyster stuffing.

I became weary of all the sexual allegations floating through social media when I read a piece about my hometown hero, John Grisham. Author, lawyer and handsome script writer, he was being interviewed by a British journalist to promote his latest book, “Gray Mountain.” Maybe he thought he was safe to speak freely? He said he thought sentencing for child pornography has gone too far, he cited a buddy of his in Canada who had “too much to drink” and somehow downloaded something about 16 year olds. It was a sting operation.

“He pushed the wrong buttons.”

And so Twitter took off calling Grisham a pervert when he was merely stating a fact. There’s a lot of middle aged white guys in our prisons it would seem! “The length of federal sentences for child pornography has increased 500 percent in the past 15 years, according to the advocacy organization Families Against Mandatory Minimums.”   https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/16/john-grisham-says-sentencing-for-child-porn-offenders-is-too-harsh-they-arent-real-pedophiles/?utm_term=.aee6aaca0fdf

But hey there are hardly any mass murderers in our prisons, mostly because they either shoot themselves or are shot by the police. Look at that TX church shooting last week. Was it only last week? Why a vigilante hopped into a truck with his gun and pursued the killer. Now that, people, makes great news coverage! Everybody should own an arsenal of guns, it’s the American way after all.

Even Grisham’s thrillers have some overtly violent undertones. Although I rather appreciated his argument, that the actual makers and distributors of this particular genre called child porn should not get less time in prison than the guy with a laptop. In a robbery of innocence, they’re not even driving the getaway car, these balding bad guys are watching the chase on a monitor. So they are complicit, but to what degree?

This does not excuse Roy Moore, who was banned from roaming a mall on the hunt for young girls. I hope the voters in Alabama can make the distinction between active and passive participation. Or will they believe it’s all a conspiracy from the “fake news?” Sexual harassment is a bipartisan affair, but taking the NRA’s blood money is NOT.

Look at Al Franken! He was a comedian at the time he supposedly French kissed a USO cast mate (with her permission) and “pretended” to grope her while she was allegedly “sleeping”; he wasn’t running for the Senate at the time. Oh, and she was an adult, an active participant in a comedy routine.

Another funny man, Louis CK , has found his bad behavior plastered all over the news. Most women I know never thought he was funny, there was always too much anger underneath his persona. If you want to know what male white privilege looks like, it’s him. He thought that by asking a woman (again an adult, and once 2 adults) if it was OK if he whipped out his willy made everything just fine. Almost a consensual self-mastabutory act in order to burn off all that stage energy. And he hasn’t really apologized, though I’m sure he’s “seeking help” since his career is tanking.

The American people decided that mass murder is just a part of the deal we made with the devil and the NRA, and until recently, sexually boorish male behavior was acceptable, so long as it’s not rape. And maybe now we need a sincere apology, so long as the particular aberration involves a penis and not a gun, oh it doesn’t involve children. Molesting vs killing children?

After all, Mr T’s little hands have been known to do their share of groping. He liked to walk into the Miss Teenage America dressing room to see girls as young as 15 naked, and bragged about it. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/timeline-of-trumps-creepiness-while-he-owned-miss-universe-w444634

Let’s hope he doesn’t push the wrong button.

The California gunman this week next killed his neighbor before going to the school. “At the time of Tuesday’s attack, Neal was out on bail for assaulting a neighbor with a deadly weapon in January, police said. That neighbor, whom police did not identify, was among those Neal killed during his rampage.” His second victim was his neighbor. Isn’t it strange how crazy people don’t kill so many people in other countries?

But the fact that a known domestic abuser with an arsenal had run amok hardly caused a ripple in the media…guns are endemic to our American society. It’s a cowboy culture, canonized in the film industry. The Second Amendment is our right! Five years after the Sandy Hook massacre, we’d much rather debate electing a pedophile in a red state.