"Mistakes were made..."

So, after raking through news reports out of the UK, let me recap my understanding of this Rotherham thing: 1400 children sexually abused, for 16 years, THREE FREAKING PREVIOUS official reports submitted to authorities about gangs of “Asian” (UK-speak for persons from South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) men handing girls as young as 11 around like party favors, and 1) No one did anything about it, and 2) No news outlet reported on it?

Oh—and now that it's been made public, five alleged perps are in custody, the Rotherham Council leader has "resigned effective immediately" and the chief policing officer offered "an unreserved apology" to the victims? But he’s not resigning. Apparently he’s not in fear for his life or property, either, which I don’t quite get.

I don't say this nearly often enough, but might there be a neutron bomb available to take out all the so-called human life forms in that area?

I mean—I hope to God that civil and police authorities are not trying to tell us that five men—the only ones in custody—are solely responsible for this? For 1400 girls being systematically raped and terrorized for the last 16 years? That there aren’t scores more of the bastards who should be charged with multiple felonies ranging from statutory rape and GBH to perverting the course of justice? Because I have not taken enough stupid pills to swallow that kind of crap without choking.

And here’s something I find extremely interesting about news coverage of this story: I had to read several reports before I discovered that all the suspects are South Asian. Seriously: it was the written equivalent of someone lowering his voice to a whisper to add, “And they’re of, uh, you know, Pakistani heritage. But you didn’t hear that from me.” 

Evidently the same PC fear of identifying a spade as, in fact, an implement for shoveling muck, which caused child protective services, police and civic officials at all levels to flap their hands and hope that the elves would come in during the night and make it all go away, is shaping the news coverage. Would there be such hesitation if the names on the booking sheet were Sobieski or Mendoza or even Patel instead of Hussain and Razaq? Really?

(And while I’m on this—why the hell did no news outlet report on any of the earlier official reports about this? Are they telling us that no one called the Rotherham Advertiser, or sent an anonymous note to the Telegraph or even tweeted something with the hashtag #childabuse; that there was no reporter on the Yorkshire police beat who followed up on the victim complaints that were actually filed; and there wasn’t one single newspaper, blogger or late-night public-access talk-radio host anywhere who was interested in breaking the story of alleged child abuse on an industrial scale? If so, this is systemic failure of media at all levels.)

I do understand the complication of the state-supported BBC’s reportage being weighted against believing the victims. The Beeb has its own problems with condoning and covering up high-profile long-term sex offenders, so they’re rather in a glass house on this story. Ergo the pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain attitude.

But how’s this for summing up their complete lack of journalistic integrity: on Wednesday, John Humphrys, one of their premier “presenters”, interviewed one of the victims, who described being repeatedly gang raped at age 12, and then being told by police that there was nothing they could do to help her.

Humphrys asked, “Why didn’t you just stay indoors?”

Evidently Humphrys doesn’t fear for his life or property either.

Oh--and apparently one of the earlier reports of the abuse was thrust under a stack of order forms for office supplies, because those in charge "hoped it would go away as a one-off". Because, yeah, we can all live with a “one-off” instance of child rape, just a single, oh, week or month of only maybe ten or 20 little girls being abused by just a few adult males. Or, even just one—we’ll give you one rape of…well, anyone, really…for free; no harm, no foul. Because we all have little slips, and one hardly counts as a real crime.

Yeah, that'll wash straight off our consciences as banner-bearers for civilization.

So far (early days, I know) it doesn’t look like anyone in authority, either locally or nationally, is in any particular hurry to drill down into who was doing what in Rotherham ever since 1997, much less who was turning massive numbers of blind eyes when it was their job to protect these children on every level. They are starting to make me think of the tweedy version of Colonel Klink; all you hear is, "I knew nothing."

In the US, there would at least be squadrons of lawyers circling the town, briefcases flapping, ready to file lawsuits on behalf of the victims against the perpetrators, their extended families, their employers, their community groups, their mosques, the police, child services, the council and Her Majesty’s government (and probably others I’m missing).

In the UK, meanwhile, I guess they’re staying indoors and pouring tea.

Let the punishment fit the crime

While I’m on the subject of library vagaries, I came across this in a book from the Mountain View Public Library:

This is the first time I’ve ever seen this kind of WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! And I’ve been checking books out of libraries for a really, really long time. Including from MVPL for more than four years now.

I mean, I get it that you’re only borrowing the materials, and you’re essentially sharing them with everyone else who wants to check the resources out, too.

But I’m not sure that this notice will deter those so inclined from defacing or stealing the books and whatnot.

The particular book with the WARING! WARNING! WARNING! was a cookbook. I wonder if they have a special problem with cookbooks being returned with burn marks and sauce splashes sticking the pages together?

If so, I wasn't the guilty party.

Looking for drink in all the wrong places

The software teams that develop search engines must be such a puckish lot. At least the ones that build out that whole autosuggest “were you looking for” element. You know, the part that implies that you could not possibly have been searching for what you told it you were searching for.

And it’s not just limited to Google or Bing.

I was looking through the catalogs of several library systems here in the Valley they call Silicon, trying to find a book called The Kentucky Mint Julep. None of the systems has it; here’s what I was given by way of hopeful suggestions:

San José Public Library suggested:

Yeah, I get that. At least we were still in the Commonwealth.

Sunnyvale Public Library went a little farther afield with:

Mmm, well, at least the right initial letters for each word.

But Mountain View Public Library just ran off the rails:

What the hell—I’ll just have a glass of Macallan.

UPDATE: Santa Clara County Library tweets that only 65 libraries in the US have this book, so I can try an inter-library loan request. Which I'll do. I also think I should find out what this Nantucket Diet is, and why it's murderous.

Gratitude Monday: Not smoke in my eyes

As follow-on to last week’s Gratitude Monday, today I am joyfully grateful for the generosity of spirit my friend Chris showed after she read the post about Smokey Robinson’s new album.

She got right down to the point, asking, “Do you iTunes?” I don’t, actually, because I’m the only person on the planet who does not own an Apple device of any sort.

(I was looking into an iPod Touch for a while, because my Zune is literally held together by tape, and a friend was happy to get me one for my birthday. But Max, the manager at the Stanford Mall Apple Store, was such an unbelievable snotbag—he was only interested in selling me an iPhone, and it turns out that not only does it not have an FM receiver, I’d have to spend a day converting all my MP3 music to the iTunes format if I wanted to use his poxy pod. So that went out the window, and I just wrapped another layer of tape around the Zune.)

So Chris switched to Amazon mode, and looky what arrived Thursday afternoon, the day after “Smokey and Friends” was released:

I’ve been dancing around the area ever since—and not just because I can’t get enough of Smokey and Steven Tyler singing “You Really Got a Hold on Me”. It’s the combination of Smokey, Steven and Chris that’s lifting my spirits.

One of the great ones

So sad to hear of the death today of Richard Attenborough, a stellar actor, director and producer. He would have been 91 in a few days, and he had been in poor health following a stroke a few years ago.

I suppose a lot of filmgoers know him from the Jurassic Park franchise. Or, God help us, the remake of Miracle on 34^th Street (he was by far the best thing in that turkey). If you’re a purist, you have the image of the sociopath Pinkie Brown from 1947’s Brighton Rock, when he was impossibly beautiful, but completely evil.

For me, he’ll always be Group Captain Bartlett, “Big X” from The Great Escape. The vortex of every escape plan in every POW camp, Bartlett is intense, driven, maybe even a little bit crazy. But there’s one scene where Attenborough lets us see how high the cost has been to him, being locked up in camps for so long; he’s got everything riding on this last, in-your-face breakout plan. It's all in his eyes. Absolutely heartbreaking.

Attenborough was a terrific director—you know Gandhi. I hope to God you know Gandhi. But he also directed Shadowlands, an entirely different story, all restraint and Oxford spires and the opening up of C.S. Lewis to love. And Young Winston, and A Chorus Line—those were Attenborough’s, too.

Here’s one other thing I know about Richard Attenborough. His family took in Helga and Irene Bejach, young Jewish sisters who were part of the Kindertransport that evacuated children to Britain from Germany and Austria just before the Second World War. The Attenborough boys welcomed them as their own sisters. You could see that foundation of generosity and decency in the work he did throughout his life and in interviews he gave.

I have to say that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone smile quite as joyfully as he.

Sorry to see him go, but what a legacy he’s given us.

Classical seasoning

Okay, look, I am of the opinion that a little Vivaldi goes a long way. There was a while, back in the last century, when it seemed like every time you turned around, there was another bleeding season coming down the classical airwaves.

However, I did find this kind of amusing. Yes, they have quite the schtick going, and one of them literally lies down on the job for a while. But still.

Also, it makes a nice change from ice bucket challenges.

Neither wit nor wisdom; not by half

As I was saying yesterday, there is no end to the credulity and idiocy of people with Internet connectivity, especially those on social media.

For example, this has been making the rounds since the news of Robin Williams committing suicide last week (frequently accompanied by solemn virtual nods and "so true"), and it just makes me want to kick someone:

Honestly, people: stringing together a few disjointed platitudes and tacking on the name of a Chinese philosopher constitutes neither wisdom nor kindness. And these particular platitudes are just fatheaded. 

Depression has nothing to do with living in the past. Living in the future may or may not involve some degree of anxiety. And living in the present can include dealing with all manner of shit, with no peace in sight.

As for Lao Tzu being responsible for this pernicious codswallop, show some respect.

Outrage, disgust and satire

Oh, I suppose it was inevitable: Facebook is testing the concept of adding a label to links to “stories” from The Onion. The label says “[satire]”. Because, as you may have noticed, people latch on to outrageously ridiculous headlines and pass them on with their own expressions of outrage and disgust at how it’s possible such outrageous and disgusting things are allowed to happen.

I’m pretty sure that they rarely even read the accompanying story. But then it might have words containing more than two syllables. Like “syllables”. Which would only confuse them further.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, because I’m not at all convinced that the kinds of people who pull the trigger on such stories as “Obama to Cut Costs by Packing Lunch Every Day for U.S. Populace”, or “Fan at Indians Game Upset to Find Someone Else in his Section” have any notion of what satire is. And don’t get me started on irony.

I do cut some slack on confusion that might be generated by the site’s business headlines. Because it seems entirely probable that “T.J. Maxx Job Application Just Asks Prospective Employees How Much They Plan to Shoplift” and that “GlaxoSmithKline Releases New Drug to Treat People Who Just Feel Sort of Weird Sometimes”. In fact, I expect to see commercials for the latter any time now, with the voice over intoning, “Ask your doctor if Blifistix is right for you.”

Also, I’m betting that people are already contacting Frito-Lay in response to this one: “Frito-Lay Contest Offers Consumers Chance to Appear in Upcoming Bag of SunChips”.

The reason I think this is that I’ve seen these sorts of waves of ravening outraged and disgusted responses to every badly-written whack-job “statement” that someone Photoshops about [insert tech giant or tech giant executive here].

For example, a few months ago this popped up on Facebook:

I swear the response was the profanity-strewn badly-spelled virtual version of “Liberty Leading the People”. This was one early exchange that came across my bows:

I pointed out that this sort of hoax would be more impressive if the perp had spelled “campaign” correctly, and got the order of “pending further investigation” right. Frankly, it gives Zuckerberg a bad name. I know he dropped out of Harvard and all, but he should get credit for at least knowing how to run spellcheck.

(I did rather enjoy the presumption of Facebook’s legal department issuing “laws, though.)

Well, my point here is that labeling stuff from The Onion as satire is both futile and inadequate, when people raise their pitchforks at things like a Zuckerberg ukase on cleaning up Facebook; or healthcare death panels. The company doesn’t have enough employees or a clever enough algorithm to be able to sift through all the bogus crap out there.

Meanwhile, here’s The Onion’s response:

That one was a no-brainer.

Dairy intake

Okay, we’re headed into the dog days, so I thought, well, time for something animal-related that’s just plain funny.

First off, I give you Bob and Dice, two cats who like yoghurt.

Bob just goes for it, possibly thinking that there’s enough for both of them. Dice is not having that, and Bob doesn’t seem to figure out what’s happening.

Perhaps he’s used to it; although he looks rather befuddled. At least there’s no fur flying.

And then we have Daisy and Cooper, two dogs who obviously like McDonald’s ice cream. If you can watch this without cracking up, you need to have your sourpuss intake adjusted.

At first I felt sorry for Cooper, because he shows such anxious longing, it was just heart wrenching. Then he went into action.

Actually, I had to watch it a couple of times, because I think he shot into hyperdrive, and I wasn’t sure what I’d just seen.

It’s videos like these that make me think the whole Internet is worth it.

Gratitude Monday: Smokey all around me

It’s Gratitude Monday. I was going to post about something else, but then yesterday I was doing my rather pathetic intervals around the 'hood and all of a sudden NPR’s Linda Wertheimer was interviewing Smokey Robinson.

Whereupon I swear the early morning Valley they call Silicon overcast just disappeared, and I decided to layer in three extra spurts of jogging, just because I was awash with energy and joy.

The occasion of the interview was Robinson’s upcoming release of an album that revisits some of his great songs, with him singing duets with the likes of Mary J. Blige, James Taylor and Elton John. (It's out as of Wednesday.) Yeah—Elton and Smokey singing “Tracks of My Tears”:

But the interview itself is just wonderful. The man is more than a living legend; he’s living history—and future-history-in-process. Oh, yeah—Diana Ross? One of the “fifty groups just in our neighborhood”. How about the more than 4000 songs he’s written? Anyone else worried that Universal/Comcast has them all stashed away in their soul-crushing corporate dragon-hoard depths? And—you want to keep your singing voice for decades? Forget the hot tea with lemon and honey, baby; practice yoga. It’s all connected.

Well, apologies to any early risers in Sunnyvale yesterday, who were greeted on their paper-fetching run by the sight of a middle-aged redheaded chick boogying past their rancher with fingers snapping and hips swinging. Because Smokey and Steven Tyler singing “You Really Got a Hold on Me” is my new jam.

For which I am deeply grateful.