Friday, November 06, 2009

Anger has an edge in the United States. Maybe it has that same edge in other countries and their news media don't come forth with it like ours do.

But here, when a man gets angry, and he has access to firearms, violence happens in ways that alarm us in the spontaneous ferocity of what erupts.

Soldiers — unarmed, vulnerable men and women — were shot dead yesterday at close range by an officer whom they were told to trust. The shooter, if he indeed acted alone, was a psychiatrist.

What we don't know on this Friday is whether that doctor had the capability of firing the 40-some rounds that apparently were spent that early Thursday afternoon. Were some of the dead or injured in cross-fire in what became a gun battle?

In Florida, the next day, a man walked into an office area where he'd once worked and opened fire on those he found there. One died; several were injured.

In Southern California this week, a teen died after being shot in crossfire at a football game. In northern California, a week or so ago, a young woman was brutally raped by multiple young men and left shaking, stripped to the waist, cowering under a park bench. No gunplay there. But Oh, the damage.

What is happening to us? Where is the fury, the rage, the cold hatred coming from? And why do we kill? Where is the compassion for the innocent? Where are the heroes who will stand up for those who are so at risk?

I won't blame it on TV, on Hollywood, on video game producers, on the music industry, on the NFL, the WWF or the UFC movement. No single player can take all the credit.

And it's not political. Please let's don't go there.

Is it the economy? Maybe. But only in the way we'd say rain has something to do with crashes on the highway.

No, it's deeper — something that's probably been building for decades. We're not the nation we once were. The rest of the developed world looks at us in pity. They shake their heads and think about how they don't want to become what we are.

And the denial we live in as our Stars and Stripes flap in the breeze only makes the problem worse. Freedom isn't free.

The role God plays in a nation's life and identity is part of the missing puzzle portion that rarely comes up in news media reporting. It's buried deep in analysis of events like Fort Hood and the Florida shootings — if it shows up at all.

God's people must take notice of the need their country has for healing. And they must pray — repenting, as well, for the sin that so easily besets us. O God, have mercy on us.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

This happens to other people.

He was a friend. But I hadn’t seen him in more than 20 years.

The era of Facebook and Twitter and other networking make it possible to connect with people you thought you’d lost touch with. We’ve all been there. You get that invitation to become a friend. You look at the picture. Yikes. Why has everybody changed?

Brian Randone and I had trained for a marathon together. We’d sung together – in the stairwell of the Chicago Avenue subway, in the dining room of Giordano’s Pizza near Water Tower Place.

He was always smiling – one of those guys who had such a presence of the Holy Spirit in his life (or so it seemed) that he could be standing at the counter in McDonald’s, look the clerk in the eye, and start a conversation about God. For me, it wouldn’t work. For Brian, it did. He was younger by several years, but I looked up to him. He just had that something about him.

When I’d been married a year or so, I got a cassette tape in the mail from Brian and it was his voice saying hello, then a bootleg recording began of a song saying, in a variety of ways, “thank you for giving to the Lord.” I think he was in seminary at that point.

I’m not sure when I first saw the news story. It eventually ended up in the Los Angeles Times, but I think it popped up first on AOL news or another search engine, picked up from a TV report or wire service.

I saw the name and thought, “Can’t be.” It sounded the same, but L.A. is a big city – lots of names, lots of people. So I looked real hard at the picture. And my mind tried to peel away the years from that photo to the college-age guy I’d run the streets of Chicago with.

He was under arrest for murder. And the murder, police said, had been beyond brutal. The woman who had been killed died slowly – tortured, the report said. Brian was the one who had called 911 about her death. When police responded, his answers to questions were strange enough that he became the prime suspect.

Reports said Brian had been living with the woman, Felicia Lee, for several months. He’d met her by the pool at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

She had been an actor in porn films and had done modeling. In fact, her face and body were all over the news reports -- moreso than Brian's picture. Stuff like that sells ads. But I wanted to know why. How could my friend have drifted so far? Had he?

The news reports said he had been part of a TV reality show about handsome eligible bachelors. That fit what I remembered about Brian, sort of. He'd been a kind of star-studded type in the ranks of single men at Moody Bible Institute where we were students together. I can't remember if he was dating anyone while I was there. But I was only there a year, part of a grad program that later expanded to a larger course of study.

A web site called "True Crime Report" carried updated news about his trial and plea (not guilty). It also carried dozens of comments from people who had known him for years. Some said they couldn't believe Brian could ever do it. Others said it didn't surprise them in the least. The ones who weren't surprised were the ones who had known him most recently — mentioning alcohol, illegal narcotics, jealousy, temper, and overall bad sense of judgment about himself and others. Most mentioned charisma: that same something I'd noticed in him at Moody.

It took me a few weeks to get his booking number and details about how to visit him at Men's Central Jail in downtown L.A. When I got there on a weekday afternoon, I expected short lines because I figured people would be at work. I was wrong. The lines were long. And it was mostly women — older teens and twenty-somethings, some with children. There were Moms, too. The day I was there was a few days before Halloween. One kid was in a witch costume. A girl sitting across from me looked to be in her mid-teens, holding a toddler.

The arrangement was a lot like the DMV. Too much work for too few people. When it gets crazy like that, when the lines get long and tempers wear thin, the people waiting cease to be human. They're being treated like numbers, objects, barriers to the peace and quiet needed to get stuff done. So they take on the identity. They act like irritants to an overworked and underpaid staff.
It becomes the law of the playground all over again. Big kids against the little kids.

When you're face to face with people who hate their jobs and hate those who make their jobs harder than they already are, you're smart to say little and know what to do before you get there. Without knowing it, I was breaking all the rules. I didn't know what to do. I needed help. And that's irritating.

So I went 0-2 in the space of four days trying to see Brian. At my second failure, I got on the phone and tried getting some answers. I got few. But I did get the sense that seeing Brian had become less about him and more about me.

When I got home, I put the Moody yearbook down on the floor of my office, put the bail bond card I'd gotten from Jaime (parking garage entrance) by my Bible, and decided I'd pray for Brian a while.

God was at work. It was time for me to get out of the way.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

On Michael Jackson: At his departure

My first 45 rpm record was "ABC" by the Jackson Five.

I walked down to Little's record store on Lake Street in Oak Park near the library, probably in the spring of 1970. And I went alone. This was a big moment.

Record stores in those days were a little like BestBuy's music department — but all confined to one little storefront. And nothing was electronic. It was paper and plastic (well, vinyl). There were rows and rows of bins with long play (L.P.) albums and singles stacked in them. They were organized alphabetically or by genre (rock, soul, country, gospel...) If I remember right, the top 40 singles were stacked on shelves behind the cash register. So the clerk just reached back, picked up "ABC" and put it in a bag for me.

Then, with adrenalin pumping (I wasn't a rich kid, so spending money I'd earned from a paper route felt huge) I plunked down the money and I walked out with my first single.

I was 10.

And to listen to that record, I had to figure out how to insert the thick insert onto the spindle of my parents' stereo unit in the dining room. I did figure it out. And that song was an anthem of my ten year-old world (well, one among a few others.)

Later I would learn that Jackson Five music was something somebody, probably in a high-rise office in New York, had labeled "bubble gum rock." No matter. This was music that grabbed my pre-adolescent mind and heart. I could relate to this kid Michael Jackson.

We were only two years apart (he was older.) And I imagined what it would be like to grow up in Gary, Indiana as he did with all those big brothers. And he was just so poised, so confident — or so it seemed.

Looking back now, given all the white-flight happening in Oak Park at the time, I'm surprised it didn't matter that he was black. I think I hardly noticed.

In my neighborhood, it was all about rep. And rep was partly what you looked like, but mostly about what you could do — usually on the playground in sports or fighting (or both). I wasn't much good at either. But I imagined that Michael Jackson could probably punch out most people on his playground, if called upon; and he could probably get on base when tossed in the schoolyard lineup, or run as fast or faster than anyone in his gym class.

And he could sing.

I could do that, and loved it — though nobody at school knew. Guys didn't do that in my elementary school. But Michael Jackson was lead singer for this group that just had something about it I loved. That made him someone worthy of my respect.

What bothered me a little, back then, was that I didn't see anything in Michael or his brothers that told me they knew God was the real meaning behind the joy and hope in life that I knew was foundational. For a ten year-old, I didn't know much theology, but I knew God was there — and I sensed He was bigger than anything, anywhere.

How could someone who looked, on TV anyway, like he was having so much fun, not know the importance of God in the world? It was a question I pondered then, and that's been on the back burner ever since — with Michael, with others in the entertainment industries.

It's a question I come back to again as I ponder Michael's departure. Did he kill himself? Did he just get sloppy with the meds he took, apparently, to the edge of excess?

People who knew him were saddened but not surprised by the news he'd gone. Comparisons with Elvis crop up often because, well, they're inevitable. There are so many parallels. But I think they're superficial comparisons. Michael was not Elvis.

Journalists will give us the toxicology results in the next few weeks. And someone will tell the world, hopefully through a scrupulous journalist, what was going through Michael's mind in the days and hours before he closed his eyes the last time.

There's a whole generation of kids like me who grew up on Michael's music who need to know the whole story (though I'm staying away from the macabre coverage.)

I'm not out sitting by his star in the sidewalk, but I am grieving. It's like he was a friend. There's something about celebrities and the psychology of fans that creates a false connection. I know all that; I know it's ridiculous. But I feel it anyway.

And what's tragic to me is that, from what I've read, Michael Jackson was a man searching for God's love. He had about him a sense of spiritual journey. Did somebody take the time to sit down with Michael Jackson and tell him how he could have real peace — right there in his world?

Fame, it's said, has a way of leaving the famous isolated and empty. Of course. He never really knew his Dad. That's part of it, too.

But more than that, this was a man who had no one to whom he could turn for real understanding. So he turned inward. And that's a lonely, potentially scary place.

And it hits home to me because I'm still only two years younger than this kid I met in 1970 and whose record I bought at that little store on Lake Street.

I haven't known fame much. Journalism faculty don't get it a lot.

But I've worked as a journalist. And I've observed fame and how it affects people.

Fame is a narcotic, a vapor, a dream. It's a pre-packaged, plastic thing that can be made — under the right lighting, with the other special effects pumped in — to appear supernaturally powerful.

But like vapors and dreams, fame is temporary. And like a narcotic, fame will, over time get in the blood stream and cause damage that's irreversible.

We're not here for fame. Jesus Christ, the only man who can be called truly famous in an eternal sense, was not driven by fame. He held it at arm's length.

And in the end, he left to others the telling of His story. It was better that way.

Yet the enduring power of Christ is that He was the real thing. Everything He claimed to be, actually was. Everything He promised, He did.

I wish Michael Jackson had learned this — about fame, about himself, about what he was and what he could do. I wish he'd met Christ. How different things could have been.

My prayer now is that those who are Michael's peers in the entertainment industry find God in ways that reach into their souls — right there in New York, in L.A., in Nashville, in Chicago. I pray, too, that those who have watched his tragic life as fans (the tens of thousands worldwide, and those of my generation who sense a bond with him) will, with God's prompting, sense they don't have to go the way he did.

There is hope. And it's not in the studio or on the concert stage.

It's in that quiet place, before God, with our arms open wide. Accepting His embrace.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Journalism and the shifting ground under our feet

Jim Romanesko, the Poynter blogger assigned to sit in the control tower as the planes go down all over the airspace, talked today about how The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are in trouble: big trouble.

Romanesko's blog also points us to Roger Simon's observation in Columbia Journalism Review (from a look-back at the McCain camp's bullying of the press) that most Americans are already so mad at the press that beating up on them only increases sympathy for them. Made McCain look like a Steelers tackler kicking a poodle. (Or Kurt Warner.)

Then we have ABC News (owned by Disney, remember) denying that a talk-show format program is bumping Nightline out of its spot in the batting order.

So who cares about news anymore? The people who need it.

And they'll get it, too. Even if they have to pay more. There's a scene in "The Count of Monte Cristo" where the count, seated at breakfast with the young man he'll later learn is his son, tells the boy that he pays well to find out what's happening in every city he visits or has interests. That's fiction imitating life. It was true in Alexander Dumas' day. It was true when our nation was founded, it was true when the newspaper barons built palaces to honor themselves — places like Hearst Castle and Tribune Tower — and it's still true today.

Maybe the notion of daily news for the masses has become a questionable commodity. But we need to take a step back. It's not the news that people don't like. It's how that news comes to them. So some don't like the wood-pulp folded thing in the plastic bag in their driveway. They still want to know if it's going to rain tomorrow and what happened at the Santa Monica Airport where there was all that smoke yesterday. And they want details. Lots of details — like if anyone's hurt or dead. The amateur pilots want to know enough detail that they can stir their coffee with it at Starbucks (if the one down their street is still open. And if it's closed, they want to know why, and if the one by their brother's house is closing soon.)

I don't want to be flip about this. The shifting of land under our feet is scary. I sat through a magnitude 4.5 quake last month and I know.

But I know what a lot of journalism educators do. It's the young people. The cigar-chompers in Chicago who are covening to talk about saving that city's journalism are making a big mistake. They forgot to invite anybody under 30 to sit at the table in front of microphones.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Reality can smell bad

Homelessness got on board the train this week.

The Metrolink system in California is a culture unto itself. It's a world of people in suits and business casual with older women or twenty-somethings dabbing makeup, teens with plugged ears punching music players, men thumbing PDAs or tapping laptops. A few talk loudly on blue-tooth devices making business deals so the world can hear — though they get looks from those around them. Metrolink can be loud, but not that loud. Ages range from about 16 to 70. You don't often see young children or infants, and you rarely see people old enough that they can't easily navigate steps. Strollers are rare. Metrolink is supposed to be disability-accessible, but the practical reality is that it's a fast ride for people who move fast. There are exceptions, and when they're aboard, they're noticed — a kind of spectacle for the group to observe.

Some read the paper (really). Others sleep, but in a kind of dignified way. It's a controlled world. You don't mess with the system — not for long. Kids who climb aboard with no ticket get citations from the conductor or one of the many L.A. County Sheriff's Deputies who patrol the train. Ticket-less kids get found out because, well, they just stick out. You know them. When people in downtown L.A. board Metrolink (thinking it's Amtrak), they're spotted right away, too. It's the big luggage (though a few luggage-toting people do take Metrolink to get home from an Amtrak stop in L.A.) People who don't speak English — regardless the cultural background — become a problem, too on the morning Metrolink routes, unless they're bilingual.

This week, about halfway between the Riverside downtown station and L.A. Union station, a woman boarded in a dark hooded sweatshirt and grayish pants. Her face was wrinkled and dry, her shoulder-length hair matted and stringy. Her feet, in worn-looking sandals, were leathery. She looked tired. And she reeked of dried urine — a stench so strong it had the sting of ammonia in it. She carried a small reddish plastic grocery bag with various items, including a black velvety thing with pinkish tassels. Was she homeless? She fit the stereotype. And train riding is all about sizing people up — fast. It helps you know where to sit, or not sit. Once in a seat, your knees are inches from the person across from you. Depending on the girth of the person next to you, it can get cozy — in a bad way. Respiratory illness spreads fast on Metrolink.

The sweat-shirted woman dropped into the aisle seat across from me and within minutes the woman directly across from me rose and trudged upstairs. The man seated across and to the left of me was reading the paper and, as if waking, asked under his breath, "What's that smell?" He looked over at the woman, who had now moved over to the window and was huddled against it, trying to sleep or already out. She looked now like a rumpled pile of laundry. "What's her problem?" he asked me. I didn't answer. The man looked at a woman seated across from the sweat-shirted woman and, with his eyes and by mouthing the words, offered the seat across from me. She rose and moved over and the two gave each other knowing looks and shook their heads.

If the sweat-shirted woman was homeless, and even if she wasn't, there was something about her that was a confrontation of this commuter cultural system. Just by showing up, she was reminding these routine-minded people that there was a larger, very-hard world outside this narrow metal car rolling down predictable steel tracks. This was a woman who — by choice or by circumstances forced on her — was living proof that the world can be unbearable. She was hard to look at, hard to be near, maybe harder to understand.

I noticed that nobody confronted her — not even the conductor, who walked by and sized her up without pausing in his gait. He could have asked for tickets. I'd seen him do so in other circumstances, carding the whole train car to nab someone he suspected was a freeloader.

But nobody tried to help her, either. That's also a rule of commuter life. Those who don't fit the system get left out.

Metrolink is a place where the lives of desperate people get hidden under a veneer of disciplined control. You punch your ticket, you board the train on time, you get off where you're supposed to. But underneath is often the pain of an abusive spouse, kids in trouble, a court system that tramples, a boss that demeans, an economy that sucks the life out of a woman or man. It can produce a kind of silent scream that can be seen in the eyes, in the tone of voice, in the very gait.

But when these board the train with their stooped weariness, if they are part of the accepted commuter cultures, there is a degree of comfort — laughter and a kind of solace, albeit mixed with pain, in these cloth-covered seats of the Metrolink cars. There are card games, there's nut bread or chocolates handed out at holiday times. It's all a kind of coping.

But this woman knew nothing of that. She was asleep in the corner of a world that wanted to forget she was there. She was left alone as the system moved on all around her and the train rolled on, stop by stop, to the end of the line.