No Tolerance – No Brains, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #156
Let’s take a look at the newspaper while we still can. Oh, I see where they caught 12 year-old Alexa Gonzalez in Queens, New York writing her name on her desk in school, using a lime-green marker. They suspended her, then they called the police who then led her away in handcuffs. “Standard operating procedure,” the authorities said. “It was an erasable marker,” the girl said.
In family court, Alexa was assigned eight hours of community service, ordered to write a book report and an essay on what she learned from the experience. If she’s completely honest in that essay, she’ll just wind up in handcuffs again. And I’ll bet she knows that, too.
It turns out Alexa was lucky. In 2008, 5-year-old Dennis Rivera was handcuffed and sent to a psych ward after throwing a fit in kindergarten.
Jeez, did any of these fools ever talk to a kindergarten teacher? And who knew they made handcuffs that fit 5 year-olds? When they took his mug shot, the police were ipso facto guilty of kiddie porn.
Friends, it gets better.
In Staten Island 9 year-old Patrick Timoney brought a two-inch-long toy gun to school. And by “gun,” I mean “something made out of Legos.” Look at the damn photo.
The kid wasn’t using it to steal other kids’ milk money. He was playing with those Legos at lunch. And was nearly suspended for it. Actually, the “gun” wasn’t in Patrick’s hands – it was in the hands of a Lego police officer. Honest.
Oh, by the way. Patrick’ dad is a retired cop.
They made the kid sign a statement – probably outing other Lego fiends – and then checked his underwear for explosives.
OK, I made that last part up. The part about the underwear, not the part about the statement. But if I wrote it in a more convincing manner, you might have believed me. That’s what society has been reduced to.
“I was in disbelief,” his mother told the New York Daily News. “Why didn’t anyone step up with an ounce of common sense and put an end to the harassment of my child?”
Kim O’Rieley’s kid was playing with Patrick at the time. His Lego character had an equally tiny ax. That didn’t bother the principal. Axes are okay, guns are not. And as some men like to say, size is not important. “Come on, it’s a Lego,” Ms. O’Rieley said.
Okay. Try this one on for size. New York City’s Department of Homeless Services rules forced Rosa Bracero to stay at an intake center and miss her English Regents exam. When they did let her take the test three days later, the state Education Department refused to score it. So the homeless girl can’t graduate.
That’s how to end homelessness.
And we wonder why kids grow up to be bitter and cynical. At exactly what point did Alice Through The Looking Glass become a documentary?
Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather show starts up Sundays at 7:00 PM Eastern on www.getthepointradio.com, replayed the following Thursdays at 10:00 PM Eastern. Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind rants pop up every on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday exclusively at www.getthepointradio.com. The regularWeird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind rants continue every Monday and Friday on The Point podcasts, available right here at www.michaeldavisworld.com, as well as at www.comicmix.com,www.getthepointradio.com, www.zzcomics.com, and www.ravenwolfstudios.com. You can subscribe to The Point podcasts at iTunes by searching under “The Point Radio.”
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February 8th, 2010 at 9:34 am
This reminds me of the time I spent 6 months in solitary for building a lego suicide bomber. In this day and age, I WISH it surprised me to hear about these kids Mike, truly… but this is the era where the “adults” in power are baffled by children, despite BEING children once themselves. Furthermore… when those in power WERE children… CAP GUNS were readily available! The big game to play was COWBOYS and INDIANS (which I assume involved a dallas football team and a cleveland baseball team…).
Ad you ask at what point did all this crazyness begin? I can’t tell you for sure, but I have theories:
When a woman is allowed to sue McDonalds for burning his self on her own hot coffee.
When a presidents’ sex life makes headlines over existing stories about war, famine, and death.
When children gave up watching the Transformers for Bakugan and Yugi-Oh, and other unpronouncable shows.
When Wolverine gained the ability to reconstitute himself in a single panel, from a handful of bloodcells.
When Superman became not only Superman Blue, but also Superman Red.
And when a sitting president who appears to have the intelligence and common sense the LAST guy didn’t have an ounce of still sits on his keester and doesn’t rectify issues like gay marriage and don’t ask don’t tell because he’s afraid of a partisan hissy fit…
THAT’S when the Looking Glass became the documentary.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:50 am
Well, I haven’t thrown a hand grenade out in the audience all day, so here goes. It sure beats going over royalty statements.
The McDonalds lawsuit was justified. Completely. Yeah, I know, people love to drag this one out as an example of the need for tort reform, but people used to say Spain bombed the Maine, too. Our need for tort reform has nothing to do with the McDonalds case.
The fact is, McDonalds was well aware they had a big problem on their hands. They settled something like 40 or 50 of these cases out of court, and that’s what they tried to do with this one but the lady wasn’t buying. She wanted revenge. It was far less expensive for McDonalds to settle these suits out of court than it was for them to actually change the procedure and the equipment necessary to sell coffee at a more reasonable temperature. Remember: they knew it was causing harm to a lot of people. If 50 of them sued, imagine all those who didn’t. We recall products for injuring far fewer people than that.
So the jury awarded the lady in question merely the PROFIT of ONE day’s sale of JUST the coffee at McDonalds, and McDonalds changed their ways. That, to me, is righteous.
Does holding your coffee between your thighs while driving seem like a reasonable thing to do? Well, no, not to me, but I don’t drink coffee. I don’t hold hot chicken soup from the Village Grocery in Wilton Connecticut between my thighs either, but if I’m driving back home Linda’s holding it in her hands and I’m equally concerned about that. Perhaps chicken soup is self-healing. I hope to not find out.
McDonalds knew they had a problem but they maliciously chose to protect their higher level of profits instead of dealing with it. The court ruling cost them pretty damn close to nothing at all.
And everybody still thinks the woman in question was a nincompoop for holding the coffee between her thighs.
February 8th, 2010 at 11:32 am
they settled 40-50 of these cases out of court, and DIDN’T change the coffee handling policy??
February 8th, 2010 at 11:42 am
I’m a little torn on this one. In the cases cited above clearly the adults involved are assholes. That said, there are crazy ass anger filled kids who don’t think much of blowing the fuck out of their school for whatever freakin reason.
I’m a grown man with more than a few decades under my belt (2, Jean) when I was about 6 I said “Shit’ in front of my mother…
To THIS DAY, even as a GROWN MAN I will not curse in front of my mother. What did she do to insure that? You Don’t want to know- lets just say she had a no tolerance policy towards cursing. Now I curse like a sailor but still NEVER in front of my mother.
I’m living proof that zero tolerance works. There’s been a case or 7 where a kid of,8,9,14 or whatever picks up a gun and kills someone. That’s a tough one but I say lock the bastards AND their parents up.
I have a zero tolerance against murder UNLESS it’s justified.
February 8th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
As the pacifist here, I have to say that I loved playing with guns as a kid. I miss the smell of caps. While I didn’t want my kid to grow up as a violent person, we had fabulous times playing with squirt guns.
All of these things are no longer acceptable in schools.
There may be a case for keeping toys, in general, out of school. I’m not sure I agree with such a policy, but I understand it. However, you cannot keep kids from imaginary gun play. If they don’t have toy guns, they’ll pretend that a ruler, a carrot, or their fingers are weapons. If you, as a parent, have a problem with this, talk to your kid. Find out what’s appealing about it.
Drawing on the average school desk improves the decor.
February 8th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Carrots?
February 8th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
The 80s were a simpler time…back in ‘82, my best friend kept an unloaded gun in his locker, to use as a prop for a play he was in. He once took it out and was spinning it on his finger in front of the girls gym during roller skating, not aiming it or even looking at the gym, but talking to a friend. A teacher skates out, gives a look like, “He has a gun, I’m not gonna do anything,” and just skated the other way. The show went on, my friend graduated and became a doctor.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
I useta have a link to the coffee case. The woman was elderly, and the coffee was 180 degrees or so. Most coffee is too hot to drink at 125 degrees. When the coffee spilled, it burned the flesh off her vagina. She wanted to settle for medical costs, but McD refused, so she sued.
February 14th, 2010 at 6:38 am
The Lego gun thing happened on Staten Island?
On Staten Island?
February 14th, 2010 at 9:16 am
Go figure.
Not much else going on there.