rambling thought....

I read a story today on Facebook....it was an NPR blurb about a black professor from Harvard being arrested in his own home. Apparently there was a call of two black men with backpacks breaking into a house...or some such. When the police arrived the professor was home. He refused to speak to the police officers. Eventually he was arrested. Now....my thoughts are not necessarily about this particular incident....but rather the commentary about it. It doesn't matter nearly as much who was right or wrong but it highlights two interesting things in this country. One that the police (not to generalize) have a tendency to want to intimidate people and expect the deferential submission of citizen, rather than respect of their authority. Two....that people of any ethnicity faced with police involvement will see profiling and harassment. Now, to address both of those issues, I don't think that every cop out there is on a power trip, but the ones that are honestly doing their jobs and genuinely want to look out for people seem to be disappearing in favor of officious and priggish types that will enforce laws with little discretion for the situation. On the other side of it, I'm not saying that there is no profiling or racial harassment, but I think that there are a lot more situations where the race card is thrown down when it wasn't an issue....by all ethnicities. Now I've seen situations of racism, prejudice and harassment....as well as reverse racism, prejudice and harassment. Whites are the ones that always assumed to be the perpetrators of profiling or harassment or racism but it does happen the other way around....I just think that we're all too concerned with everything and should relax. But maybe I'm totally wrong....but that's what I think at the moment.

What happens to washed up stars?

You know....I found myself flipping through channels last night....not that I have many (got rid of cable...) but I found myself looking at channel 54....here that's UPN or whatever it is now. Well, I found a show that seemingly was based around internet videos...kind of like America's Funniest Home Movies or whatever but most of them seemed pretty dated. The thing that I found surprising was that it was hosted by Arsenio Hall. I came to an odd line of thought after noticing that....is that what happens to stars that fall out of popularity? They jump at the chance to host any show they can, just so they can stay in the public eye? It's frankly pretty pathetic. He wasn't even funny, it was all so sad.