Stop Staring, Keep Walking

By Lance Hendrickson
Contributing Writer

One can’t develop a better perspective on international relations and national politics and basic human nature (all the same subjects, really) than by practicing law in a rural area. Seriously.

See, when I practiced back in Michigan, every New Year’s Eve the phone’d ring about three a.m. or so (collect), and it’d be some knucklehead in the hoosegow, explaining how he’d managed to accomplish something stupid that evening. Drunken snowmobile crashing, marijuana bartered from someone who didn’t tithe to the cops (or smoked inside a bar belonging to someone who did) – same stuff, every year.

Until Jim Blevins called, that is. Jim delivered Twinkies, coached little kids in various sports, and I think he owned half the Minigolf or something. He had a crazy wife out screwing around on him, but that was par for the course ‘round those parts. In short, Jim was the last guy I’d expected to roll me out of bed.

“Lance? Yeah, hey, sorry, did I wake you?”

“Noooo, no, I’m usually up ‘til four or so. What’s happening?”

“Uh, well, I’m in jail…”

“So I gather. What’s the charge?”

“Uh…I guess it’s a gun charge…something about assault…oh, and attempted murder.”

That opened my eyes. “Well, don’t talk, Jim. I’ll be there in the morning.”

Sure enough, the crazy wife’d brought her boyfriend to the VFW where Jim was, sauced, and of course Jim couldn’t get the guy to fight there, so he met him back home—with an unloaded shotgun. Once he’d socked Romeo in the nose, I guess he felt better, so then he’d just waited there for the cops, and they wrote him felony cases #001, 002, and 003.

He was guilty as sin. Plea negotiations started at 15 years. But I argued that Jim was loaded, the gun wasn’t, and Romeo was asking for a bust in the nose, anyway – what jury wouldn’t know why the wife (pffft…) brought Romeo to the VFW in the first place (or why Romeo went)? All three of ‘em were crazy/drunk/stupid (take your pick), nobody else got hurt, and the only guy with a crooked schnoz deserved it. Whoooo cares? So, sending the Minigolf owner to fend off Bubba in a cement shower for a decade would be pointless, right?

Turns out, that worked. Jim got two weeks’ jail on work release (jobs in Michigan being dodoesque even then), no more drinking for a year (which was fine, as the wife’d already made him drink plenty much), and he forfeited the gun (no small penalty in those parts).

Point is, when everybody knows the corn-nuts are just behaving the way we pretty much expect them to, it isn’t a big deal. So I have noooo idea – none – why anybody in this country, much less the world, paid any attention to hotel-manager-cum-“reverend” Terry Jones’ Qur’an-burning brainstorm.

I mean, it’s like pointing and yelling when a bum takes a piss in a parking garage. Fine, he shouldn’t do it. Fine, none of us would do it (except, maybe, Fergie, or Kanye, or the aptly-named Andy Dick, I guess). But he’s a bum. That’s what bums do. Just stop staring, keep walking, and go get your Starbucks already.

In fact, if he had to pipe up, that’s all Dave Petraeus should’ve said: “Unfortunately, we tolerate kooks in America, just like y’all do everyplace 20 clicks outside of Kabul. Well, actually, we give them tax-exempt status, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyways, I’d like to remind the good people of Afghanistan that the U.S. military has a policy strictly limiting its desecration of Qur’ans to flushing them down toilets, and then in Guantanamo only, so please don’t get any more janked about our ongoing occupation of your country than you normally would be.” Or something like that.

For that matter, Obama could’ve done a little cheap-shot campaigning on the issue. “Hey, Afghanistan – look, I’m sorry, but I gotta say, just as you’ve got Kandahar, we’ve got Florida. If there was anything we could do about those addle-pated neo-Nazi turds down there, we’d have never let ‘em hustle their king, Dubya, into the Oval Office. But the same way you can’t disarm the Taliban, we can’t forcibly medicate this crouton-cranium Jones (much less sell Florida back to Spain). Let’s all ignore the crazies together as best we can.”

So, hey, ABC? CNN? Uh, Islamic people worldwide? Jones is nuts. Fine. No story here. Let’s just move along and go get a latte or something, o.k.?

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