You tell me.
Author: Shelley Stolaroff Segal
Potty Talk–a Tale of HB2
Say it aint so! NCAA and ACC, you’ve knocked the buckle right off of my Bible belt state! North Carolina is at its knees, and you are testing our faith. Pulling seven NCAA championship games, and then withdrawing nine ACC championships—including, gulp, basketball—all because of our stupid potty law? This is September madness. What the hell are the righteous supposed to do?
I hear moaning everywhere, and the gritting of teeth, and the tearing of flesh, and so on. I understand that principle is important but we’re talking about sports for God’s sake. And a huge economic impact. Please Council of Presidents, rethink your decision. Please Governor McCrory rethink your decision. North Carolina is deeply polarized like the rest of the country, and people have drawn battle lines over this issue. Talk about your Battleground State.
I thought about Governor McCrory and bad decisions when I visited the Netherlands in April. My husband and I wanted to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Hieronymus Bosch’s death. Bosch was a medieval artist whose paintings about heaven and hell were macabre and brilliant. His heaven was jolly and meant for pure spirits; his hell was for tortured souls who had made poor choices in life.
We confronted HB2 every time we went to the bathroom. The ubiquitous unisex signs implied justice for all, and caused me to lament the sad state of our politics at home. HB2 had passed shortly before we left town and it was embarrassing trying to explain to people that it didn’t represent us, just our myopic lawmakers. (The real potty talk came later though, when I tried to explain Donald Trump.)
I would like to share my own HB2 experience, which occurred in the charming city of Den Bosch. It was a wee adventure that left me, well, flushed.
One morning my husband and I went to a pub for breakfast and before we ate I wanted to freshen up. I practically fell down the circular staircase looking for Damas and Gent signs, stick figures, or signage of any kind guiding me to the correct bathroom, but there weren’t any. I admired the state of civil liberties in the Netherlands. “If we could only be so open-minded at home,” I thought. “They don’t even need signs here.” I entered one of the bathrooms and spotted a stall immediately.
After relieving myself I was about to step out when I heard the door open. Then I felt heavy steps on the floor. I got nervous when I didn’t hear any chatty female voices. My face started to pump when it occurred to me that there must have been urinals in the room. As I listened to the deep growls and low voices around me I realized I was an idiot who was stuck in a men’s room.
How gender specific. Oh hell, how on earth did this happen? At that moment discrimination wasn’t on my mind, or the LGBT community, I just wanted to escape my own poor choice.
This probably would’ve been funny in the states, where I could have joked my way out of the bathroom. But in Den Bosch I was a female tourist trapped in a men’s room stall surrounded by male grunts and complicated Dutch accents. (My years of German didn’t make a dent in what I was hearing.) My I Love Lucy situation was causing me sweat and gag, but I didn’t dare peek out of my stall. I just had to wait.
Finally, after about six minutes of quiet I slowly opened the door and fled. “Why didn’t you just look at the signs?” My husband asked me as I pumped half a bottle of hand sanitizer on my body. “I didn’t see any, I swear!” So much for awareness.
When we returned to NC HB2 hadn’t been repealed, businesses were starting to migrate, and athletic organizations were threatening to retract tournaments. The U.K. Foreign Office had even issued a travel alert to its LGBT community. How embarrassing. That’s when I knew my state was circling the drain and I should just turn around and go back to the Netherlands.
Pity Bosch isn’t alive today. He would converse with Governor McCrory about the dire consequences of his decision. “Governor, methinks you should reconsider this most egregious and unfortunate law. North Carolina and its legions of mighty sports fans are ill-tempered and burning with outrage. They may not be prepared to turn the other cheek, or even press the lever in your general direction this November. You have pissed them off, so to speak, and they are hell-bent on tanking your career in politics. Believe me sir, life without basketball is bad, but hell is worse.”
I’m sure Bosch would enjoy painting the hell going on inside the NC legislature. He might even turn his brush outside to an array of rainbow-colored porta-potties basking in the sunshine. Maybe porta-potties are the answer to the HB2 problem. They are unisex after all. I say porta-potties for everyone! Perhaps I should contact the NCAA and ACC powers that be and share my solution. “Ladies and Gentlemen, porta-potties don’t discriminate.”
If it were only that simple. Unfortunately, time is running out in the Tarheel state; our lawmakers need to repeal this stinking law. I don’t want North Carolina to go down the toilet. Our sporting championships already have.
The Black Therapist and the Autistic Man
After I read this article, and watched the video, and blew my nose, I thought to myself, “If this ever happened to my autistic son’s African American therapist–if he were ever popped by a, ‘I don’t know why I shot him’ law officer, I wouldn’t be able to forgive him. I still feel that way. Especially because these officers added insult to injury by flipping Kinsey over and cuffing him–while he was bleeding. If they’d hit an artery and he had bled out and died, they would have to stand trial for what, second degree murder? Negligent homicide? Hopefully, but probably, not anything. He had his hands up in the air for God’s sake. The lack of understanding and respect in this country–on every level–has me thinking that society’s gone f___ing crazy. I wrote My Son almost TEN years ago. It was prescient, and now it’s dated. Life matters. Whether you’re black, white, disabled, LGBT, a veteran, a senior, a cop, or a child. A little Kumbaya would be nice, I just hope we don’t wipe each other out.
South Florida Police Shoot Autistic Man’s Caretaker as He Lies in Street
Police in South Florida Thursday said they were investigating an officer who shot and wounded an autistic man’s caretaker, as video emerged apparently showing the caretaker lying down with his arms raised before being shot.
Police were responding to reports of a man threatening to shoot himself on Monday, North Miami Assistant Police Chief Neal Cuevas told The Miami Herald.
Officers arrived to find 47-year-old Charles Kinsey, a therapist who works with people with disabilities, according to WSVN-TV. His 27-year-old patient reportedly ran away from a group home. The therapist claimed he was trying to return his patient to the facility.
Police ordered Kinsey and the patient, who was sitting in the street playing with a toy truck, to lie on the ground. The video shows Kinsey lying down and putting his hands up while trying to get his patient to comply.
An officer then fired three times, striking Kinsey in the leg, Cuevas said. No weapon was found.
The latest shooting comes amid weeks of violence involving police. Three law enforcement officers were fatally shot and three others wounded Sunday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by a shooter whom police also gunned down. Two weeks earlier, two white officers in Baton Rouge killed a black man, Alton Sterling, 37, on July 5 during a scuffle at a convenience store. That shooting, captured on cellphone video, provoked widespread protests about police treatment of the black community.
On July 6, another black man, 32-year-old Philando Castile, was killed in Minnesota when a police officer pulled him over. The next day, a sniper killed five Dallas police officers as they guarded a peaceful protest.
In Florida, Kinsey’s attorney, Hilton Napoleon, provided a cellphone video to the Herald on Wednesday taken moments before the shooting. It shows Kinsey lying in the middle of the street with his hands up, asking the officers not to shoot him, while the autistic man sits next to him, yelling at him to “shut up.”
“Sir, there’s no need for firearms,” Kinsey said he told police before he was shot, according to WSVN. “It was so surprising. It was like a mosquito bite.”
Kinsey is black. Police haven’t released the name or race of the officer who shot him but said he’s been placed on administrative leave, which is standard.
The investigation has been turned over to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, Cuevas said.
In an interview with the TV station, Kinsey said he was more worried about his patient than himself during the incident.
“As long as I’ve got my hands up, they’re not going to shoot me. This is what I’m thinking. They’re not going to shoot me,” he said. “Wow, was I wrong.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Hug Your Daughter
My daughter is nineteen, and I treasure her, cherish her, adore her, and so on. All I want to do right now is hug her. I don’t understand this story, or this woman. My chest still hurts after reading about these killings. Of course she had a gun. That made it easier to carry out a solid plan. I guess they’ll make a movie about this family. What a shame.
What to Know About Christy Sheats and the 2 Daughters She Shot Dead
Just Like Tofu Trump, I Can’t Help Myself
I almost nearly swore when I started this blog a year ago I wouldn’t discuss politics or religion. How ludicrous. I’ve broken my promise several times with zeal. I can’t help it. This is an election year. And a buffoon is running for president. And my blog is about, “Dumbfounding Human Behavior.” Trump fits both the dumb, and the behavior, if the behavior is “very, very bad.” Or a “disgrace” or unterrific.
In Trump fashion I’ve come up with several monikers for the presumptive nominee: Bozo Donald, after my favorite unevolved, carrot-haired clown, Fascist Donald, (which has no ring to it but makes perfect sense) even Narcissist Donald. Of course branding him is a waste of time, it’s not like he’ll ever see or appreciate my extreme wit. And he wouldn’t care anyway. He’d brag that I’ve copied the way he sophomorically labels people. I don’t care, I can’t help myself.
I have a new one: Tofu Trump. (Yes, I know it sounds cheesy.) But just like tofu, The Donald is full of holes and boring. (He says the same thing over and over and over and over again. And bragging about yourself constantly is dull.) But more importantly, he doesn’t have a solid, inner core. He takes on the flavors around him and TRUMPets what people are desperate to hear at the time. A few weeks ago when he met with establishment Republicans like Paul Ryan and others, he was on his best behavior and cheerfully repeated the party’s platform. (Pardon the alliteration.) What a relief. He was going to deliver the health benefits of tofu. You know, what is healthy for the party. “Yes, Yes, Yes! Our man is “Presidential!” Yes, he was all-consuming for a thirty-minute period.
But then a day later, at one of his infamous rallies, he delivered the unhealthy side of Tofu Trump. He took on the flavor of the bigotry around him—the intense, primitive hunger from people craving change in any form—and became the dangerous man he truly was, and is. The puffed up Grand Insulter, the race baiter, the liar. He can’t help himself. He has to blast anyone, whether they be a judge, journalist, or opponent, who questions his power and authority. The irony is that the more shots he fires off at his supposed enemies, the more holes he’s blasting into himself. (Just look at his poll numbers. Pity he can’t boast about them today.) Instead of soaking up knowledge or positivity he doubles down on his rhetoric—on his spongy self–and comes up dry.
Wow, I’ve really enjoyed my metaphors today. I wish I had more time to opine, but I’m reluctant to give over my power and energy to such a spongy, coreless individual. Sometimes I just can’t help myself, though. Sometimes I wish I could just fire off some good old fashioned ridicule in his ever expanding, tangerine face. It’s frightening that he’s running for the highest office in the land. It’s frightening that he got past better qualified candidates who foolishly cross cut themselves. Power-addled candidates with stars in their eyes, who simply couldn’t give up their quest, even at the expense of the nation they purported to love. The media is even more frightening. They practically handed Trump the nomination with millions of dollars of free coverage. And a free pass. We the People need to call him on his bullshit. I’m sure I will break my promise yet again, and complain about him very soon. I just can’t help myself.
Shell Tells 