Triad Today

With America in the throes of WWII, FDR ordered that the military draft age be lowered from 21 to 18. Soon thereafter, Senator Jennings Randolph began lobbying for the voting age to be lowered as well. According to History.com, Randolph wrote, “They (young people) possess a great social conscience, are perplexed by the injustice in the world, and are anxious to rectify those ills.”

Randolph’s pleas fell on deaf ears, but in 1954, President Eisenhower rekindled the debate when, during his first State of the Union address, he said, “For years our citizens between the ages of 18 and 21 have, in time of peril, been summoned to fight for America. They should participate in the political process that produces these fateful summons.” Again though, support for a lower voting age dwindled until over a decade later, when we were embroiled in the Viet Nam War. President Nixon supported a constitutional amendment to lower the voting age to 18, and by summer of 1971, the 26^th Amendment was ratified. Ironically, the new law unleashed 11 million new young voters onto the political scene just in time to vote for Nixon’s anti-war opponent George McGovern. Nixon was still re-elected, but in 1972, 55% of the newly franchised young voters went to the polls.

Over the years, youth voting has been erratic. For example, according to the US Census, only 36% of eligible young voters turned out for the 1988 election. Four years later that number was 44% thanks in part to an interest in Bill Clinton. That percentage was duplicated in 2008 when young people were energized by Barack Obama, but by 2012, their participation dropped back to 38%. Reportedly, the 2016 election brought out young voters in numbers that nearly equaled those of 1972, although an informal poll, taken during the Portland Oregon protest rally the day after Hillary lost, revealed that nearly 70% of Millennials didn’t bother to go vote the day before.

Today, in the wake of the Parkland, Florida school massacre, young people ages 16 to 18 are more politically active than ever. Their fervor and anti-gun protests are even stirring up debate about lowering the voting age from 18 to 16. Late last month, the Washington, D.C. City Council voted to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local elections, with Councilman Charles Allen saying, “At the age of 16, our society already gives young people greater legal responsibility. They can drive a car. They can work. Some are raising a family or helping their family make ends meet. They pay taxes. And yet, they can’t exercise their voice where it matters most – at the ballot box.”

Mr. Allen’s comments harken back to Jennings Randolph, Ike, and Nixon, all who argued that if a young person can be called into battle, he should be able to vote. The problem is that D.C.’s action does not apply to federal elections. Short of Congress passing new voting rights legislation, a change to the 26^th Amendment would have to be ratified in order for the voting age to be lowered to 16. Theoretically there’s enough time to act on either option before the 2020 election, but to do so, members of both parties would have to put politics aside, and agree to let millions of young, angry voters have a say in national politics at a time when high school kids despise and distrust all incumbents.

It is unlikely that Congress will demonstrate the kind of non-partisanship it would take to lower the voting age, but we can only hope. Yes, I realize that some high school students are immature and lack an understanding of how government works, but those same shortcomings also apply to millions of adults whose political parties gave us Trump and Hillary to choose from in the last election. I doubt that 16-year-olds could do any worse than that.

 
 

Last month one of my Triad Today guests talked about Ridge Care’s wonderful “Hearts and Soles” program, which encourages senior citizens to walk around Hanes Mall in the mornings. The program promotes wellness and social interaction. That same weekend, about a hundred junior citizens were walking around Hanes Mall, but for a different purpose. The teens hung around past the mall’s 6pm curfew, and when they were asked to leave, violence erupted. Police arrived and were in the process of making an arrest when the mob interfered, resulting in more arrests. So there you have the great shopping mall conundrum. By morning, one group gathers to stay fit, and by evening, another group gathers to have a fit.   

The question is, why are young people getting into so much trouble at malls in the first place? I suppose that some scuffles develop organically. For example, Johnny and Jill run into Jerry who used to be with Jill, and all of a sudden, Johnny and Jerry are throwing punches. But, increasingly police say that mall violence is orchestrated, with unruly teens having been summoned via social media to show up and act up. Either way, the problem of teens misbehaving in malls is nothing new. In 2016 alone there were numerous incidents of mall violence, including in Manchester, Connecticut where 300 teens attacked police, and in Aurora, Colorado, where 500 teens faced off against 50 policemen. There were also similar confrontations in Ohio, Connecticut, Texas, and New York. The trend continued in 2017, including at a mall in Cherry Hill New Jersey, where over a thousand teenagers fought with police, and in Sacramento, California, where under-aged teens caused a disturbance in Arden Fair Mall the day after Christmas.

For now, there is some evidence to suggest that earlier curfews and parental escort policies can prevent teen violence. For example, immediately following the Hanes Mall incident, mall manager Charlie Gwinn moved the curfew back on Fridays and Saturdays from 6pm to 5pm, after which time, anyone under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a parent. Since then, no other disturbances have been reported. Of course no good deed goes unpunished. Gwinn’s counterpart at Arden Fair Mall tried to enforce a similar teen ban, and now he has the ACLU on his case. Speaking on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, attorney Michael Risher said, “the Unruh Civil Rights Act prohibits businesses (including shopping centers) from engaging in wholesale discrimination against a specific group, and that includes children.” According to the L.A. Times, Risher also wrote to Arden Fair Mall, warning that they, “must treat people based on their conduct and not because they are part of a category.” Translation, only a relative few minors cause trouble, so why ban them all from a mall because other minors might cause trouble.

Risher has a good point, but a mall must also act in the best interests of all shoppers and merchants. One of Gwinn’s associates told me last week that since the earlier curfew has been in effect at Hanes Mall and other CBL Properties locations, the company has seen a “return of the family shopper,” and “fewer incidents of shoplifting among teens.” I also spoke with a Hanes Mall merchant who said the weekends are much more quiet now. That’s the good news. The bad news is that, ironically, curfews and bans are being enacted at a time when malls are in desperate need of more foot traffic. According to Newsmax, mall vacancies are at an all-time high with no signs of slowing down. It’s a trend that the Wall Street Journal refers to as a “Retail Apocalypse”.

Even so, malls can’t afford to attract the wrong kind of foot traffic. The solution then, seems to be for malls to work with local police to maintain a database of teens who have caused trouble in the past, and then ban those troublemakers altogether, but allow all other young people free access with no curfew. Law-abiding teens should enjoy the same freedoms as law-abiding seniors, no matter what time of day they gather at the mall.

 
 

Legendary television producer Steven Bochco had a wry sense of humor, so when I first heard that he passed away on April Fool’s Day, I held out hope that he had perpetrated a hoax on us. He hadn’t. Steven, who won countless awards and accolades across a career that lasted for half a century, finally lost his long battle with leukemia last week. He was 74 years old.

Like his virtuoso father, Steven had a talent for music, but it was writing that captured his interest. In the formative years of his career, Bochco took any job he could get just to be around the written word, first as a $50-per-week script reader for Sam Goldwyn, Jr., and later as a script fixer at Universal. His early writing credits for NBC included Columbo and McMillan and Wife but his first big solo series came while working for Grant Tinker at MTM studios. Hill Street Blues was a critical success, racking up 98 Emmy nominations and four wins as “Best Drama” during its seven-season run.

Bochco followed Hill Street with L.A. Law, another four-time Emmy winner, then signed a long-term development deal with ABC, where he co-created the ground-breaking cop drama, NYPD Blue, which ran from 1993 to 2005. Unlike Hill Street Blues, which one reviewer referred to as a “balance between comedy and drama”, NYPD Blue was mostly a gritty, edgy drama that pushed the envelope when it came to raw language and nudity. Not surprisingly, more than fifty ABC affiliates refused to air the first episode in which David Caruso and Amy Brenneman showed off their bare body parts during a roll in the hay.

After creating the short-lived Iraq War drama Over There, Steven returned to the legal and police genres with Raising the Bar (2008) and Murder in the First (2014-2016), respectively.

In addition to writing award-winning television scripts, Bochco also penned two books, Death by Hollywood, a tongue-in-cheek detective novel, and Truth is a Total Defense, his 2016 autobiography. I first met Steven at the Museum of Television and Radio (now Paley Center) in 1998, where he participated in a panel discussion about creating dramatic television. The following year I interviewed him for my first volume of TV Creators. Before the book went to press, I sent Steven a preview copy. A few days later, he returned the pages, and they were filled with handwritten notes in which he corrected my grammar, and even fact-checked some of my research. I still have that marked-up manuscript, and point to it with pride. After all, how many authors can say that they were edited by Steven Bochco? His notes made me a better writer, and a more thorough researcher, and for that I will always be grateful.

During our two interview sessions in the summer and fall of 1999, Steven revealed a lot about himself and his craft. Here are some highlights:

 

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(On his early interest in writing): “My teachers always told me I could write, and so it just sort of seemed clear to me at a very early age, that that’s what I did better than anything else. I wrote a lot. I wrote short stories, I’d write poems. I always enjoyed the actual act of writing. I enjoyed expressing myself on paper.”

(On creating Hill Street Blues at MTM): “That was the most creative control I ever had. I had creative autonomy on that show, for the first time. […] Grant Tinker created an amazing company, and the environment was truly unique, in much the same way I hope that the environment of my company is unique, and a reflection of the environment that existed in those days at MTM.”

(On dealing with network censors): ”I’ve had horrible fights (with them), because even though you may have creative control, you still have to deal with broadcast standards. I‘ve been at war with those turkeys ever since I’ve been in television, but I’ve never lost an episode to it. I’ve never had to fundamentally alter an episode.”

(On pushing the envelope with NYPD Blue): ”We were being deserted in droves for cable, and I felt if we didn’t make this kind of show, and get people back in our tent by being more adult, and more contemporary in our use of language, then we were going to be out of business.”

(On trusting your vision): “If you start listening to everybody who’s telling you what’s wrong with what you’re doing, then you end up with the old cliché. You end up with a camel, and a camel is a horse designed by committee. My responsibility is to myself. I trust my judgement, and you’ve got to be true to your own vision.”

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Steven Bochco was always true to his own vision, and he left behind an innovative body of work to prove it. He also left me with some notes on how to be a better writer. I hope I didn’t let him down.

 
 

Adultery has been in the news a lot lately, thanks largely to full disclosures by a porn star and a former Playboy bunny who claim that they both had sex with Donald Trump (not at the same time, of course). And while Mr. Trump’s extra marital dalliances may be big news on CNN, there’s nothing new about presidents who have strayed from the nest.

JFK sneaked women into the White House on a regular basis, including such luminaries as Marilyn Monroe and Judy Exner, the famous mafia go-between. He also took nude swims in the White House pool with two of his interns. Lyndon Johnson was even more brazen, allegedly having sex in the back room of Air Force One, while his wife was on board. And then there’s Bill Clinton, who had affairs with numerous women including Jennifer Flowers and Paula Jones, before romping around the Oval Office with his intern Monica Lewinski. Of those presidents, only Clinton got into hot water, and that was for lying about sex, not actually engaging in it. A similar fate may await Donald Trump who is being investigated, not for committing adultery, but for allegedly having his attorney and a magazine mogul pay hush money that could be construed as illegal campaign contributions.

But the real question is, why don’t these powerful men (and men in general) ever pay a substantial price for committing adultery? After all, adultery is still a crime in 21 states, carrying prison time ranging from 30 days to five years, and fines ranging from $10 to $10,000. In Massachusetts, for example, adultery carries a three-year jail sentence and a fine of $500, while in Oklahoma, an unfaithful spouse can do five years in the slammer. In Wisconsin, the jail time can be three years, and a whopping $10,000 fine. On the flip side, if you cheat on your wife in North Carolina and get caught, the longest jail term you can face is 30 days. But marital cheaters fare the best in Maryland, where you only pay a $10 fine for messing around.

The problem is that while adultery is often used as leverage in divorce settlements, it is almost never prosecuted as a crime in and unto itself. For example, according to Divorcenet.com, here in North Carolina a cheating spouse can be sued by an aggrieved wife only if the adulterous act took place within the past three years. Translation? Even in a divorce action, any man whose past indiscretions are discovered to have taken place more than three years prior, gets a free pass. It’s easy to see, then, why most district attorneys feel that prosecuting an adulterer under antiquated statutes, is a low priority. Not so in many other nations. In parts of Asia, an adulterer is subject to painful caning. And in fifteen countries (including Iran and Somalia), having sex outside of marriage will result in the offending party being stoned by a legally assembled mob.

American men who commit adultery are lucky to be living in a country where their crime isn’t treated as a crime, and where their spouses tend to throw lawsuits at them, rather than rocks. Of course, we don’t yet know what kind of throwing arm Melania has.

 
 

Fifty-four years ago, Mary Ann Summers and six other shipmates set out for a three-hour tour that left them stranded on an uncharted desert island. Today, Mary Ann’s alter ego, Dawn Wells, is setting out for a different kind of tour that will take her all over the world. This time, her first port of call will be the High Point Theatre on Saturday, April 28. “What Would Mary Ann Do?…the Confessions Tour” was inspired by Dawn’s 2014 book of the same name, in which she offers up common sense advice on a wide variety of topics. The live show will focus on her life and career, including humorous stories from her time on Gilligan’s Island, which premiered in September of 1964, and ran for three seasons.

Dawn Wells was born October 18, 1938 in Reno, Nevada. Her father Joe was part-owner in a Las Vegas hotel, and her mother Evelyn was a homemaker, and a bit overprotective of her daughter. “My mother knew where I was every single second. My junior year in college, I’m driving from Reno to Seattle with my boyfriend, and the highway patrol pulls us over. I rolled down the window and the policeman said, ‘Is there a Dawn Wells in the car?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Call your mother,’ he said.” [Dawn laughs]

Dawn won the Miss Nevada contest in 1959, competed in the Miss America pageant, then caught the acting bug in college. Soon afterward, she found steady work on television, often guest-starring in westerns like Cheyenne, Maverick, Wagon Train, and many others. She was a natural fit for westerns because her great-great-grandfather was a stagecoach driver, and Dawn had ridden horses since she was a child. “I remember one of the first western episodes I did, they asked me, ‘Can you drive a buckboard?’ I hadn’t driven a buckboard in my life, but I said ‘Of course I can!’ My horse got away and they had to come get me. [laughs]”

After appearing as Mary Ann in over a hundred Gilligan episodes that are still in re-runs, Dawn is one of the most recognizable actresses on the planet, and is in constant demand at nostalgia conventions and on talk shows. But starting next month, her schedule gets even busier as she launches her tour in High Point.

I first met Dawn in 2013 when she attended the Western Film Festival in Winston-Salem. We re-connected last week and talked about her book and the tour.

 

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JL: Why did you write the book in the first place?

DW: Because we don’t have a Mary Ann today, and I think it’s very difficult being a parent, or a best friend. There’s no guidelines. My generation was pretty black and white. There were no drugs, no sex before marriage. Now with all of the temptations and all of the permissiveness everywhere, it’s much harder to raise a child. But there still needs to be a guideline behind it, and I think that’s Mary Ann.

JL: Mary Ann herself had a pretty good upbringing because she never engaged in intimate relations with the Professor on Gilligan’s Island.

DW: Back then there was never any romance. They couldn’t even show my navel. We’ve come a long way. If we were doing the show today, we’d all be living in the same hut. [laughs]

JL: I understand your touring show is for the entire family, especially for fans of Gilligan’s Island, but what do you want the audience to take away from your presentation?

DW: When you’re in the audience, I want you to know that I’m relating to you. I’m not talking to you, I’m one of you, and that’s what I feel Mary Ann is. And what do I want you to take away from it? Don’t lose the values you’ve been raised with.

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As a special treat, the audience will be able to ask Dawn questions during the second half of her show. You can ask her about Gilligan’s Island, or you can even ask her for advice. Just don’t ask her if she can drive a buckboard.

Tickets are still available for the April 28 performance, and can be purchased online at www.etix.com or by calling the High Point Theatre box office at (336) 887-3001.

 
 

Last Monday a special ceremony was held in which Senator Richard Burr announced that he was donating all of his official papers to his alma mater, Wake Forest University. During his presentation, Burr said the collection is for, “all who are passionate to lead.” I hope that’s the case, but the sad irony is that Burr has spent his entire political career failing to lead.

Burr’s “Go along, get along, quid pro quo” approach to elective office has been evident ever since he was first elected to Congress in 1994. Since then he has voted in lock-step with his fellow Republicans, and with a slew of special interests. But partisan voting is one thing, avarice voting is quite another. The fact is that Burr has received a fortune in donations from industries whose products and positions have brought hardship to millions of people, and he has enriched himself through the longevity those donations afforded him.

During his 2016 re-election campaign, Burr promised to lower the tax burden for everyone, but in December of last year he voted to raise the taxes on 55% of North Carolinians. According to the Raleigh News & Observer, those tax hikes amount to $900 per household per year over the next ten years. Meanwhile Burr voted to lower taxes for wealthy folks like himself, who will save an average of $115,000 per year. It’s just one small example of how Burr is able to increase his net worth simply by staying in office long enough to enact policies that can bolster his wealth.

As a senator he sits on a committee that has oversight of the FDA, Medicare, and Medicaid. But instead of using his position to help people, Burr has voted with the interests of industries who he should be trying to regulate. According to STATnews.com, companies that manufacture drugs and medical devices gave a million dollars to his last campaign, and, in return, Burr pressed for lower taxes on Big Pharma. He also received big bucks from the insurance industry, therefore he opposed the ACA, voted to privatize Medicare, and refused to take on Blue Cross Blue Shield for price gouging. As a result of his votes, millions of people can’t afford the costly drugs they need, often won’t seek proper medical attention, and can’t pay for rising premiums.

And then there was Burr’s vote to oppose passage of the STOCK Act, which would prohibit members of Congress from trading on and profiting from insider knowledge of the stock markets. Sean Galitz of CBS.com suggests that Burr opposed the Act because he held stock in a number of companies who were “lobbying for several energy and regulatory bills that [Burr] co-sponsored”, and that those companies had donated a half-million dollars to Burr’s campaign.

But perhaps the most disturbing example of Burr’s special interest votes has been his continuing refusal to support substantive gun reforms. Rob Schofield of the Progressive Pulse reported that in 2016, Burr voted against a bill that would have required universal background checks and limited the sale of guns to known terrorists. He has also remained steadfast in his opposition to banning assault rifles. Becky Ceartas, director of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, wrote that Burr’s votes were a quid pro quo for the staggering sums of money he received from the NRA, which in his last campaign amounted to $7 million dollars. Burr chose not to put safety of our families first, pushing that aside to demonstrate [his] loyalty to the gun lobby,” said Ceartas. She’s right. Instead of fighting for bans and restrictions on guns, Burr has looked the other way after every massacre because that’s what the NRA expects him to do.

Campaign contributions from special interests like the NRA, Big Pharma, and the insurance industry, along with votes against the STOCK Act, have enabled Burr to significantly increase his personal wealth. According to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Burr’s net worth in 1994 was $189,000. By 2004, it was over $2.6 million dollars. That’s an increase in net worth of 500% during a period when, according to Ballotpedia.org, the average American household net worth increased by less than one percent.

I remember a time when elected officials acted like statesmen, and never compromised their ethics or their votes for political or personal gain. They arrived in Washington with very little wealth and they left the same way. Now that he’s no longer running for office, Richard Burr is being portrayed as a leader in the Senate. He is finally coming into his own as a statesman, but that’s only because he’s already come into everything else. I, therefore, call upon Mr. Burr to do the decent thing, and have his papers removed from Wake Forest and delivered to a more appropriate venue, like NRA headquarters, or to the cages at a local animal shelter. Either place will give Burr’s papers the respect they deserve.
 
 

In sports, statistics matter, and Woody Durham had them in spades: 14 years as sports director for WFMY-TV in Greensboro; 40 years as the radio voice of the Carolina Tar Heels; play-by-play man for 1,800 football and basketball games, including 23 bowl games; announcer for 4 national basketball championships, and 13 Final Fours. But there’s no statistic that can describe Woody’s commitment to his craft. UNC head coach Roy Williams said of Woody, “He prepared for each game as if it were the national championship.” He also prepared every TV broadcast with that same level of intensity. I know because I witnessed it first hand.

I met Woody in 1974 when “Channel 2” hired me to run studio camera and put sports scores on screen for his daily newscasts. Eventually I wormed my way onto the anchor desk as late night weatherman. It was my first on-air job, and I was thrilled to be sharing the stage with a broadcasting legend, especially one who worked so hard to prepare his material. The preparation paid off because Woody never made mistakes, and that put pressure on the rest of us to do our best.

A year or so later, Woody left WFMY to focus more of his energies on Carolina sports, and what energies they were. Listening to Woody Durham call a close game on the radio was like having Rembrandt paint you a masterpiece with words, except that Rembrandt graduated from Carolina and hated Duke. But by 2011, the words no longer came as easily to Woody as they once had. Writing in his autobiography, Woody Durham: a Tar Heel Voice, Woody said that he felt he wasn’t as sharp on air as he’d like to be. Ever the perfectionist, he retired from broadcasting rather than make a mistake on air. The fact is he was feeling the early effects of aphasia, a disease that would gradually rob him of his extraordinary ability to communicate. It was a cruel twist of fate for a man who painted pictures with words. On March 7, that booming Tar Heel voice was silenced forever. Woody Durham was 76.

My most treasured memory of Woody came in September of 2012 when he stopped by the Triad Today studio to plug his new book, and to promote a fundraising project for Ronald McDonald House. Here are a few highlights of our last time together in a TV studio.

 

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JL: You’re a real legend.

WD: [laughs] I tell people who say I’m a legend, that I had 900 lettermen, and six different coaches, and they all made old Woody sound pretty good on Saturday afternoons.

JL: You developed a love for Carolina at an early age.

WD: My dad came back from WWII and we were living in Mebane at the time. He and my mother both grew up in the Chapel Hill area, and Dad had been a real football fan. He told me about how he used to ride into Kenan stadium on the running boards of Coca Cola trucks, so of course he and Mom had season tickets. I really did become a football fan then.

JL: You played football in high school where you met your future wife Jean. But she later said that it wasn’t love at first sight for her because you were arrogant. Is that true?

WD: Maybe I was trying to be older than 15. As a matter of fact I told her that I was 16, so that she would think we were the same age, and she later found out that wasn’t quite the truth. I think that’s the only time I ever told her something that wasn’t true. [smiles]

 

During the interview Woody also talked about his friend, coach Dean Smith.

 

WD: He’d meet a person in Chapel Hill, and six months later he’d see that person at the airport, and was able to call them by name. He had a terrific mind for remembering people’s names.

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Woody Durham also had a terrific mind, and on the day we taped our segment, his was as sharp as ever, and his speech was picture perfect. I will always be grateful for that brief reunion, and for the time we worked together at WFMY. Back then, Woody set the bar high for everyone who worked with him, and I’m lucky that some of his professionalism rubbed off on me. They say it’s not bragging if it’s true. I never heard Woody brag about himself, but if he had, it would have been true, because he was the best at what he did.

 

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From the Archives, Sept. 6 2012

Woody appears on Triad Today

 
 

Last May I wrote about a study released by the healthcare website STAT, in which they determined that Donald Trump’s language and cognitive abilities are at 3^rd and 4^th grade levels. At that time, and even prior, I had noticed that the President struggled when trying to read aloud, almost like a child trying to sound out words. In fact, the only time Trump doesn’t struggle is when he speaks off the cuff. The problem is that his vocabulary is limited and child-like. A recent report from FACTBASE showed that Trump’s vocabulary is the lowest of any of the past 15 presidents. To that point, the STAT report also cited data from the Flesch-Kincaid grade level test which documented Trump’s frequent use of derogatory words, like “idiots” and “losers”. And he spews out derogatory nicknames for people he doesn’t like, just as a child would do.

Even more disturbing, Trump can’t focus on or process information. According to CIA director Mike Pompeo, National Intelligence director Daniel Coates and others, Mr. Trump won’t read his daily briefings, and will only pay attention to them if he is given big pictures to look at. Speaking of not processing information, just watch as he emerges from a meeting and has to have notes prepared for him so that he can summarize what had occurred only moments before. So what could be worse than a president who doesn’t read, can’t process information, and acts like a 9-year-old child? The answer is a president who, in addition to his other faults, doesn’t listen, can’t empathize, and is disingenuous when he says something.

Last week when meeting with a group of high school students about ways to prevent school shootings, Trump would occasionally say in a monotone voice, “I hear you.” So what’s wrong with that? Plenty as it turns out. An observant videographer noticed that the President had a small card cupped in his hands, so he zoomed in for a close-up. The card contained several key phrases that Trump’s staff had prepared for him, and guess which phrase was highlighted in yellow? “I hear you.” The man is so incapable of feeling, so inarticulate, so ill-informed, that he actually needs a cue card to tell him when to say “I hear you.”

Later that same day we also got a look at Trump the non-focused ad-libber. While meeting with 40 governors, the President was addressing the problem of trade imbalances, when he told a story about how Ford couldn’t get its cars into Japan. Without pausing, or indicating a change in topics, he said in the same sentence, “and we’re going to get rid of the bump stocks.” Say what? It got worse. A few minutes later he told the governors that what the country really needs is to arm our public school teachers. He then launched into this weird diatribe: “I don’t mean all teachers would have a gun. I want people that have a natural talent, like hitting a baseball, or hitting a golf ball, or putting. How come some people always make the four-footer, and some people can’t even take the club back? Right? Some people can’t take the club back.”

It’s no wonder that, last year, a number of congressmen called for Trump to undergo a full psychological exam. Accepting that challenge, the President had his personal physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson, administer something called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), which, said Jackson, the President passed with flying colors. But a closer look at MoCA reveals that perhaps Trump’s most challenging question was one that asked him to identify the names of three animals pictured on a page. Reportedly he correctly identified a lion, a camel, and a rhino. Gee, I feel better about our president’s mental fitness already.

Let’s face it, you don’t have to be a medical specialist to know that Donald Trump is a few fries short of a Happy Meal. But never fear. At least he is brave. Last week while speaking to the governors about the Parkland high school massacre and the deputy who failed to enter the building, Trump said he would have gone in, even if he didn’t have a gun. Funny, but when he had a chance to carry a gun into battle, he asked for and received five deferments.

It’s really sad that we have a president who needs a cue card to tell grieving students, “I hear you.” I just wonder if he had that same cue card with him the day his staff told him that nearly 70% of Americans want him to leave office. I guess he has selective hearing.

 
 

Last month we weathered through some arctic temperatures, but for those of us taxpayers with an ounce of common sense, last month is also when hell froze over. That’s when a school district in Wisconsin was coerced into writing a former student a check for $800,000.

Had the student been raped or assaulted on school grounds? No. Had the student been denied an education? No. Had the student been injured at school? No. So why then was Tremper high school in Kenosha, forced to pay a former student close to a million dollars? Because school administrators refused to call the student by the “proper” pronoun, wouldn’t allow her to use the boy’s bathrooms or showers, and wouldn’t let her run for Prom King.

The student, named Ash, was 16-years-old when the pronoun battle began. Ash’s parents filed a federal lawsuit in 2016, which they eventually won on appeal. The Kenosha school district ran out of resources and couldn’t afford to take their case to the Supreme Court, so last month, taxpayers in that district settled with Ash for $800,000.

The payment was a first for this type of case, but the battle has been brewing since 2013 when Kathryn and Jeremy Mathis, the parents of an 8-year-old Colorado boy, demanded that their son Coy be allowed to use the girl’s restroom because he identified as a girl. Other similar cases began to spring up across the nation (in states like Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, and Massachusetts), and so did legislation and policies that required students to use the bathroom and shower facilities according to their biological gender. As the Colorado school principal suggested five years ago, if a young child has a penis, then he is still a boy, and it wouldn’t be fair to other students to let that child use the girls’ bathroom. All of the parents I’ve spoken with agree with that sentiment. They oppose letting a teenage boy shower with their teenage daughter simply because he “identifies” as a girl.

It should come as no surprise, then, that two weeks ago, the Trump administration decided that the Department of Education would not be allowed to weigh in on, or make policy affecting the use of school bathrooms and showers by students who identify with a gender that is opposite to their biological sex. Had that decision come earlier, and with it the probability of a Supreme Court who would be sympathetic to Kenosha, then perhaps the school district’s wallet would be $800,000 fatter now. Instead, administrators at Tremper high school gave in to the threats of bullies. They buckled to the demands of Ash’s media savvy parents who had enabled and pushed for their daughter to be transgender, then ran roughshod over anyone and everyone whose views ran contrary to theirs.

Increasingly our society seems to have a zero tolerance for bullying, so it is important to note that bullies come in all forms. There are bullies who physically beat up their victims. There are bullies who use social media to shame their victims. And there are bullies, like Ash’s parents, who use threats to obtain something they want. These are the overzealous, publicity-seeking parents who, after coercing their own children to be something they are not, then dare the rest of us not to accommodate their beliefs and demands, or else pay the price.

Last August I wrote about Texas residents Rachel and Frank Gonzales. They began letting their little boy dress up like a girl as early as age 3. Then, when “Libby” was 7, his parents challenged the Lone Star State’s school bathroom policies on his behalf. I wondered at the time if such gender-enabling by parents was actually harmful to the child, and I discovered that, according to a number of experts, it is.

Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins, told CNSNews.com that young children who are pushed by parents to act in conflict with their biological sex, suffer a mental “disorder of assumption.” Moreover, left to their own devices, young kids who are conflicted about gender, grow out of the confusion. In fact, studies by Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic found that 70% to 80% of children who express transgender feelings, “spontaneously lose those feelings” over time. Dr. Ken Zucker, head of the Gender Identity Service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, concurs. Zucker told the Globe & Mail, “About three-fourths of little kids who have issues with their gender will be comfortable with it by adolescence, …or grow up to be gay or bi.”

So why don’t Libby’s parents, and Coy’s parents, and Ash’s parents, just take a wait-and-see approach to the gender identity issue, rather than pressuring and enabling their children into an adult lifestyle? Dr. Alice Dreger, a bioethicist at Northwestern University’s school of medicine, and a staunch supporter of transgender rights, says that, “Parents who encourage their kids to change gender are socially rewarded as wonderful and accepting, while parents who try to take it slow, are seen as conservative, unaccepting, and lacking in affection.” In reality, those characterizations are probably reversed.

I’m of the belief that any adult has the right to identify with another gender, but young children aren’t emotionally or intellectually capable of making that leap. I’m also of the belief that we need to protect all children from bullies, even if those bullies are their parents.

 
 

We’ve heard it all too many times before. A mentally disturbed loner buys an assault rifle, opens fire in a school, church, or nightclub, and kills dozens of people. The media interviews neighbors, fellow students or co-workers who suddenly recall incidents of sick, dangerous things the shooter did which they didn’t report. The FBI, local authorities, and mental health professionals never shared information that could have prevented the mass murders. Former cops and agents go on TV to tell us that the shooter fell through the cracks. Family members of victims plead for a ban on assault weapons. And, politicians go before the cameras to express their condolences, blaming mental illness, not guns for the tragedy. They say now’s not the time to discuss reforms, then a few days later they forget the massacre and move on to really important matters, like deporting children and criminalizing marijuana, and pain pills. Well, we heard it all again last week when 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, calmly assembled and loaded his AR15 assault rifle, then proceeded to kill 17 people and wound 14 others.

Cruz had once attended Douglas High where he was constantly getting into trouble, and eventually expelled for picking a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. He was known to be obsessed with guns, sold knives out of a lunch box, and posted photos and instagrams that showcased his deadly arsenal, and his promise to use it against students.

Leading up to the massacre, Cruz had been in and out of counseling (mainly out) and was the subject of at least thirty 911 calls to his home. He identified with white supremacist groups, wore a “Make America Great Again” cap, and said that he wanted to shoot some people after seeing a Trump supporter hassled at a campaign rally last year. And when a responsible citizen notified the FBI of Cruz’s social media boast to “become a professional school shooter”, the agency first said they couldn’t locate the boy, and later admitted they didn’t follow protocol in trying to apprehend him.

Last Wednesday marked the 8^th school massacre since the start of the year, and while bodies continue to pile up, Congress sits on its backside, and refuses to pass significant gun reforms, including restoring a previous ban on assault weapons that stood for ten years until the Bush Congress repealed it in 2004.

Before he was a candidate, Donald Trump advocated for a ban on assault rifles, but during his campaign and since taking office, he’s been against any restrictions on gun ownership. Speaker Paul Ryan won’t even allow a gun reform bill to reach the floor of the House. Meanwhile, North Carolina’s Republican Senators Richard Burr and Thom Tillis advocate for gun rights instead of victims’ rights, and last year even voted to keep the names of mental health patients off of the national criminal background check data base. So what’s the reason for their refusal to ban assault rifles and large ammo clips? Money. The NRA spent $30 million dollars to get Trump elected, and gave Ryan nearly $400,000 to keep his seat. Meanwhile, the NRA gave Tillis $4.4 million dollars, and Burr $7 million dollars.

Are shooters like Cruz crazy? Yes. Do law enforcement agencies screw up and fail to share red flag information? Yes. Do students, teachers, and neighbors often stay silent until it’s too late? Yes. Was Cruz the one who actually depressed the trigger and opened fire on his former classmates? Yes. But Congress deserves the lion’s share of the blame for the Parkland massacre, and the Orlando massacre, and the Vegas massacre, and the Charleston massacre, and the Aurora massacre, and the Sandy Hook massacre, because they refuse to ban assault rifles, and they refuse because they’re in the NRA’s pocket.

Last week, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut told his colleagues, “This epidemic of mass slaughter only happens here in America, not because of coincidence, not because of bad luck, but as a consequence of our inaction. We [Congress] are responsible for a level of mass atrocity that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else.”

Lissette Rozenblat, the mother of a Parkland survivor was even more passionate, telling CNN, “If we don’t do something now to take action, this is going to keep happening. Whether it’s mental health or terrorism, there are guns out there, automatic weapons that should not be in the hands of civilians, and that’s what it comes down to. Greed, money, NRA, politicians who are taking money from the NRA, and at the end of the day, we just want to keep our kids safe. As parents that is our ultimate goal, and sending them to school should not be like sending them into a war zone.”

This November we should remember Ms. Rozenblat’s plea when we go to the polls to elect our Congressperson. We should let those who seek our vote know that nearly 70% of all Americans want a ban on assault rifles. And we should reject the argument made by NRA-backed Congressmen who say the most important thing is to protect the 2^nd Amendment, our right to bear arms. We should remind them that when the 2^nd Amendment was written, a man with a musket was lucky if he got off two shots per minute, and that today, kids like Nikolas Cruz can get off 500 rounds in half that time. The Founding Fathers could not have anticipated the kind of weaponry that exists today, nor would they have stood for citizens being massacred. Neither should we.

 
 

In a newspaper ad, the Republican National Committee promised prosperity, and hinted at full employment if their candidate was elected. Their promise was, “a chicken in every pot, and a car in every garage.” But that ad wasn’t placed recently. It ran during the 1928 presidential campaign of Herbert Hoover. Hoover went on to win the election, but he wasn’t able to deliver on the RNC’s promise, because one year later the stock market crashed, triggering the Great Depression.

It took some doing, but Franklin D. Roosevelt, who succeeded Hoover, brought us back from the brink by initiating various federal programs that created jobs and a social safety net. But World War II strained our resources and, following the euphoria of Victory in Europe Day, many economists and politicians feared another depression was imminent. That’s when Congress passed the Employment Act of 1946 which put the federal government in charge of coordinating plans and resources that would “afford useful employment for those able, willing, and seeking to work, and to promote maximum employment.”

Some in Congress opposed the Act because they believed that “full employment” should be the goal, not “maximum employment.” Unfortunately, neither phrase was backed up by specific numbers. That came later. In 1978, the law was amended and re-named the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, which established 3% as the targeted goal for our rate of unemployment.

Late last week the Cooper administration reported that North Carolina ended 2017 with an unemployment rate of 4.5%. A few days later we learned that the rate of unemployment nationwide is 4.1%. By Humphrey-Hawkins standards that’s not too good, but today, Congress is OK with 4% of Americans being out of work. That’s because Congressmen all have jobs. The question is, why can’t we have zero percent unemployment? Mike Moffatt of ThoughtCo.com says that’s not possible because of three factors: Cyclical Unemployment, Frictional Unemployment, and Structural Unemployment.

An example of Cyclical Unemployment is when workers are laid off due to a recession or a slow economy. Frictional Unemployment, on the other hand, is a matter of choice. Example, a CPA decides he wants to change careers and look for a job in advertising. Except in rare instances, that CPA is going to be out of work for awhile. Then there’s Structural Unemployment which occurs when there’s an absence of demand for the workers that are available. An example of that happened when Dell located in Forsyth County to make desktop computers, then shut down a year later because consumers were mainly buying laptops.

In short, those three types of unemployment keep our overall jobless rate in flux, or as Quora.com explains, zero unemployment is “not possible in a market economy where, at any given point, someone is switching jobs, looking for a job, or is otherwise without a job.” That brings us back to what actually constitutes an acceptable or normal rate of unemployment, and right now, government officials seem to think that “full employment” is achieved when only 4% of the population is out of work.

Perhaps zero percent unemployment is unattainable, but why should we be satisfied with 4%? And why shouldn’t the jobless rate be the same for everyone? As it stands now, unemployment among African Americans is 7.9%, for Hispanics it’s almost 9%, and for teens it’s 15%. If Trump can really bring back the hundreds of thousands of jobs that went overseas due to more favorable tax climates, and if Congress can ever agree on a comprehensive infrastructure program that would put millions of people to work, then we might be able to move the unemployment needle downward for everyone.

In 1928 we were promised a chicken in every pot. Ninety years later, millions of Americans are still waiting for that promise to be fulfilled. This is an election year, so if Congress refuses to deliver on that promise, then they should be forewarned: On election day, the chickens may not be in our pots yet, but they sure as hell are coming home to roost.

 
 

Last year I angered a lot of my friends when I criticized politicians and the media for misstating and miscommunicating the nature of the so-called opioid epidemic. My concerns were two-fold. First was the tendency to lump legal analgesics with heroin when citing statistics. Second was an overreaction by Governor Cooper and others in handing down restrictive regulations on the sale and use of legal opioid medicines on which millions of patients rely for much-needed pain relief. Now comes a third cause of concern: the blame game.

Last week Forsyth County joined a jillion other localities in deciding to sue the manufacturers of opioid medicines. Their reason? Opioid abuse has caused the County to spend non-budgeted funds on emergency and social services, and the lawsuit seeks to recoup those costs. Translation? Companies who make pain pills are to blame for people abusing or misusing those pills. What’s next, blaming the pills themselves for being ingested? Actually, yes. A few days after the Forsyth County litigation was reported, a convicted killer in Ohio announced that pain pills led him to murder two people. That’s right, the man is appealing his death sentence on the grounds that many years ago, after suffering a work-related injury, he took pain pills, which, years later, caused him to brutally stab his wife and another man.

The absurdity of these kinds of blame puts me in mind of the NRA’s mantra about guns, which was eloquently re-stated by Elise Patkotak who, writing for the Alaska Dispatch in 2012, said, “Drugs don’t kill people—people kill people (and themselves) by misusing the drugs. As with guns, drugs are morally neutral until used by a person in a specific manner that renders them, for that moment, good or bad.”

That same year Dr. Steven Passik, a professor of psychiatry and anesthesiology at Vanderbilt University, came to a similar conclusion when he suggested that it is wrong to blame drugs for addiction. Speaking with the Center for Health Journal, Passik said, “This is the first mistake of opioidphobes.”

So if prescription opioids are not inherently bad, then who or what is to blame for addiction? Again, politicians point the finger at manufacturers and the doctors who prescribe their product. But that reasoning sets up a false narrative. Yes it’s true that there have been unscrupulous companies who purposely flooded the market with pain pills for profit. In 1996, for example, Purdue Pharma introduced oxycontin and assured physicians that the drugs weren’t addictive. Purdue lied and was later punished. And yes there were doctors and pharmacists who created a cottage industry around bulk sale of pain pills. But the Feds cracked down on that scam and today, according to Dr. Caleb Alexander, director of the Center for Drug Safety at Johns Hopkins, doctor shoppers make up less than one percent of all opioid users.

So if manufacturers, doctors, pharmacists, and the pills themselves should not be blamed for the opioid “epidemic”, then who does that leave? The answer is the people who ingest the meds. But we must be careful not to assign blame to all people who take prescription opioids, only to those who abuse them, and that brings us back to the mischaracterization of the problem itself.

According to the Institute of Medicine, 100 million Americans suffer with chronic pain which, if left untreated, costs the U.S. economy $300 billion dollars in lost production each year. By restricting access to prescription opioids, we are, therefore, punishing and prolonging the pain of innocent, law-abiding citizens. Yet those who seem to be criminalizing the use of legitimate medicines, do so by lumping them with illegal drugs.

During his State of the Union address, President Trump told us there were 64,000 opioid deaths in 2016, then said “we must go after the drug dealers,” thus confusing the sale of street heroin with the legal dispensing of pain meds. Also, the figure he cited was the total number of deaths attributed to drug overdoses, but, in truth, the CDC puts that number at closer to 42,000. Nevertheless, only 18,000 of those deaths were due to overdose of prescription opioids, and statistics show that most of those fatalities were the result of mixing other meds and substances with the pain pills. Say what you will, but there is no proof that family physicians are telling their patients to take pain meds while drinking alcohol and popping Valium and Xanax. It’s up to the patient to take prescription drugs as directed, and use some common sense.

I know that one shot of bourbon probably won’t hurt me. But I also know that five shots of bourbon and two beers can do some damage to my body, not to mention cause harm to others if I choose to drink and drive. Speaking of which, according to the CDC, nearly 80,000 people die each year from alcohol-induced deaths, and another 10,000 at the hands of a drunk driver. Yet there’s no outrage by politicians, or a call to make whiskey illegal. And what about the 480,000 people who, between 2005 and 2009, died from tobacco smoking? Shouldn’t the state legislature restrict all adults from buying cigarettes?

There’s no doubt that prescription opioids can be addictive, and that’s why I applaud Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center for leading the way in developing a new protocol for treating pain which is already meeting with great success and satisfaction by patients under their care. But, for now, it serves no purpose for politicians to compare hydrocodone to heroin, misstate statistics, or restrict the proper use of prescription medicines that are designed to relieve pain. Such actions that limit access to meds can actually back-fire, and lead people who suffer with addiction, to turn to heroin instead of seeking help. That’s why we shouldn’t be looking for people to blame, rather, we should focus our efforts on treating those who have abused opioids. Otherwise, we’ll just bring more pain to more people, and that’s the irony and danger of playing the blame game.