Unbiased statistics needed to ensure honest debate on charter schools

There appears to be some doubt about the numbers that the Christie administration has been using to "prove" its contention that charter schools are the panacea to the problems facing poor school districts.

Robert Braun, in The Star-Ledger, took the state to task for its selective approach to statistics a month ago. More recently, Gordon MacInnes does the same thing. In an opinion piece on NJ Spotlight, the former education commissioner, raises questions about the structure of studies cited by Gov. Chris Christie and acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf to support charter schools. In fact, he writes, the "evidence for this contention is thin."

To bolster its case, the NJ Department of Education (DOE) released in January tables of test results showing that about three-quarters of charters had higher proficiency rates on state tests than their district peers.

Not so fast.

Columnists, respected academics and public school advocates lost no time in pointing out that meaningful performance comparisons must involve students with similar characteristics -- like free lunch eligibility, special education or English learner status.

Failing that, the comparisons cannot be used to decide which schools do the better job.

The department returned on March 11 with much more expansive documentation that -- surprise -- supported the same conclusion concerning the superiority of charters. Accompanying the multiple charts, tables and bar graphs were statements confirming and strengthening the Christie administration’s policy preferences.

Poverty status is at the core of the DOE's contention.

Essentially, the department anchors its argument that charters are pretty much like district schools when it comes to poor kids by dismissing the distinction between "free" and "reduced" lunch eligibility.

And that, MacInnes says,  makes little sense. There are significant differences in scores between free and reduced lunch students, as well as between girls and boys in charter and public schools and those of English learners and all of these variables need to be controlled for in order that studies be taken seriously.

MacInnes -- who served under Christie Whitman and serves as an assemblyman from conservative Morris County -- is not taking sides in the charter debate. Rather, he is asking for an honest accounting, especially given that a handful of national studies offer evidence that directly contradicts what the Christie administration would have us believe.

Before the Christie Administration bets just about everything on charter schools, it should conduct a fair and more complete assessment of the performance of similar students. When Stanford undertook a large-scale evaluation in 17 states, it did just that. It found that only 17 percent of charter school students outperformed their district peers, but 37 percent underperformed them. The rest did about the same.


Eighty-three percent doing worse or about the same does not sound like the answer to New Jersey’s educational woes.

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Court: Give schools what they deserve

A special master appointed by the state Supreme Court has found that education cuts pushed through by Gov. Chris Christie -- and ultimately approved by the Democratic Legislature -- violate the state's constitution.

The cuts, which ignored Jon Corzine's funding-reform law, had a disproportionate effect on low-income students, according to the master.

The ruling sets up a showdown between the governor and the court -- the court, according to experts quoted by The Star-Ledger, is unlikely to ignore the findings of its own appointed master -- that we have not seen since the court shut down the schools until the Legislature relented and passed the state's first income tax.

The court decision puts the basic question in front of the public: What is the role of money in education? The answer, I think, is yes.

Given that there are plenty of studies that show that the best predictor of educational success is socio-economic status, meaning that communities that lack resources have the greatest trouble in providing quality schools. The only way we can offset the financial advantages that rich school districts have is by giving extra money to the poor ones -- which rarely is enough to offset the vast array of other problems that hamper educational attainment.

You cannot expect a student who faces the danger of gunfire and gangs, hunger, lack of heat, broken families, etc., to perform at the same level as a kid from the suburbs, even a poor kid from the suburbs. The advantages that a kid gets in Cranbury, South Brunswick, Maplewood and Morris County are visceral and cannot be offset by charter schools, teacher accountability, high-stakes testing and all of the other gimmicks we have turned to as a way to avoid spending the necessary money to make up for the gap.

We should be striving for equity of opportunity, which we have basically abandoned.

For now, we are going to fight over where the money is going to come from to meet the court's requirement that we actually pay for what we said we were going to pay for.

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An elegy for Wayne

A close friend died early this morning. This is for him and for those of us who loved him:

ELEGY: FOR WAYNE KRUGER, 1962-2011

Bombs fell in Baghdad that night, and all eyes were on the small screen
above the bar in a tavern that was demolished by mistake years later,
and what should have been a giddy chance to say goodbye and good luck
as you ventured west to the Rockies and a new start
became a solemn ceremony laced with uncertainty.
That war lasted just weeks, but never really ended, flaring
back up a dozen years later and still smoldering as the bombs
began to fall on Tripoli, hours before Bill called to tell us you were gone,
around the time that you left us. These things happen in threes is what they say, as if the dead
demand company in their travels, so when Annie heard about her Aunt Rae,
who died at ninety-seven a day before you were to go, it seemed to confirm
what we’ve known since Bill called with the news of your tumors:
It was when and not if, not maybe, and even the smallest bits of good news
provided in e-mail by your wife to the world were no match for the inevitable.
It all happened too quickly – a cliché, I know, but it did and I don’t give a damn
about the cliché right now because it all went down too quickly for any of us to comprehend.
And yes, too far away too to understand or say goodbye,
though distance is just physical and a piece of me feels
as if you’re still around the corner, as if we could meet at the Hub
and drink pitchers before driving to New Brunswick to throw
rice at the movie screen as Brad and Janet get married and drive off
into the sordid world of Dr. Frank-N-Furter.
One night, we stopped for drinks in the bar next door, the Stagecoach,,
Where the band played twisted, fevered jazz, the four of us the only white kids in the place
aside from a vibes player leading the musical assault.
We drank and left and laughed then shouted “asshole” at Brad on the screen
as sweet transvestites danced on the Arts Cinema stage.
On another night, you climbed the hill to the rail tracks
above the parking lot behind the theater –
I don’t remember who climbed with you but I do remember
the train whistle and someone yelling your name and the terror
that gripped my gut until you emerged from the darkness with a drunken laugh.
We were young, of course, and stupid and never thought of the consequences,
and I guess we were lucky to have gotten through all of that and, yes, to make a life,
which is all that we can ask of ourselves, to make a life and live it and be happy.
And I think of the tracer fire on the television that night
and the bomber planes over Libya tonight and question whether
anything has changed, whether it can, and know that so much has,
that you have left us, like Tommy and Glenn did before, too soon way too soon,
and that none of these words can do justice to your memory,
or the place you held in all of our hearts and souls.

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The mirage of acceptable risk

The nuclear disaster in Japan -- caused by a historic earthquake that triggered a tsunami -- should be calling into question the growing consensus that nuclear power can be a safe and cost-effective energy source that can allow us to move away from fossil fuels.

We have been hearing lots of talk about acceptable risk and cost-benefit analyses -- a Slate podcast had left and right in agreement opposing alarmist overreaction.

Floyd Norris, in The New York Tomes, warns against the complacency that the acceptable risk mantra can cause.

Each case — a collapse of house prices and a cascade of problems threatening a large release of radiation — was viewed as so improbable that it could be virtually ignored in considering risks. Those who counseled otherwise were viewed as alarmists.

What was not considered sufficiently, perhaps, is just how serious an unlikely risk may be. If it is bad enough, the risk may not be worth taking, no matter how good the odds. There is a reason people do not play Russian roulette, even if the odds are highly favorable. It is a game you lose only once.

And that's the issue -- or one of the issues. When a nuke plant fails, even if it is rare, the fallout is a massive human toll, in immediate deaths and longer-term damage. That to me is unacceptable.

Lines in the political sand

The lines are going to shift. That much we know. And once they do, it is likely that the Democrats will still control a majority of legislative districts in the state -- that's what Patrick Murray thinks, anyway.

The map he included with his latest blog entry -- one based on a memo purportedly distributed by Alan Rosenthal, the Rutgers professor who will be the deciding 11th vote on the redistricting commission.

Murray says that Rosenthal has set his sights on stability, meaning that he will push the commission to avoid large-scale changes. The memo, he says, outlines five basic standards: population range, contiguity, compactness and avoiding municipal splits, and "contiguity of representation.'

Taken together, Murray says, the standards "allow for very little change to the current map." And that, he says, is consistent with Rosenthal's writings. He calls this believe "the money card in Rosenthal’s standards":

Rosenthal defines this as incumbents facing a familiar electorate. In other words, incumbents should be drawn into districts where the majority of voters are already represented by them. You could also call this the de minimis rule – any change should not be consequential to the current system as a whole. Anyone who has worked with Dr. Rosenthal or read his published works on state legislatures will not be surprised by how much he values this type of continuity.

The problem, as Murray points out, is that Rosenthal has little interest in competitiveness (neither party is interested in competitiveness; they would prefer to see uncompetitive districts that protect as many of their own as they can draw). In a state with few competitive districts -- the 14th, the 12th, maybe one or two others and this assumes a rather loose definition of competitive -- that leave entrenched power in place.

Power shifts are rare in the state -- Democrats took control in the 1970s after Watergate and Republicans took control temporarily in the early 1990s in reaction to the Florio tax hike and watched their majority slowly slipped away.

The redistricting discussion is treated as a partisan debate, but it should be viewed as a chance to improve representation, to expand democratic opportunities. If that means a shift in party power, then so be it.

Locally, it appears, the 12th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th districts -- which cover most of central New Jersey -- are likely to see significant change. South Brunswick is likely to be moved, as is Monroe, but it is unclear where they will end up. If Plainsboro stays put -- and it should remain connected to West Windsor -- then Linda Greenstein will be losing a large chunk of her voters. South Brunswick's power could grow if moved to a district that includes the other Brunswicks, because it would mean most of the towns would be about the same size.

The "De Minimus" map I've included with this post has South Brunswick, Monroe, East Brunswick and Franklin making up a new district. What's left of the current 14th would be filled out with East Windsor, Hightstown, Robbinsville and Millstone; the 15th would get southern Hunterdon County and so on.

The more competitive map favored by Murray (left) would pair Hamilton and Trenton in a new 14th filled out with parts of Monmouth and Burlington counties; South Brunswick would move to the 17th with Franklin and North and New Brunswick; East Brunswick, Old Bridge and Monroe would make up part of a new 40th district.

Is this better? Hard to say. It certainly shifts more bodies around, but does it create better representation? Murray thinks so.

In any case, maybe the lines mean a lot less than we think. Maybe we just need a better class of candidate.

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Overreacting and the First Amendment

Protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church are not my favorite people in the world, but they have the same First Amendment rights as the rest of us regardless of the nonsense they spew or where they spew it.

But are there limits to their rights to protest -- including how close they can get to their targets?

A Maryland congressman believes the answer is yes. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat, "introduced legislation that would prohibit protests five hours before and five hours after military funerals, and force protestors to gather at least 2,500 feet away from the event."

The rules, he says, "would preserve the protestors’ right to free speech without harassing the military families."

“I didn’t like the Supreme Court decision, but I understood it,” Ruppersberger said. “But the court has recognized the right to regulate the time and place of those protests -- if it’s reasonable. And I think it’s reasonable to have these families come and go to the funeral without being impacted by the protests.”

The rules, however, would render any protest moot by pushing protesters about a half mile away from their targets and using time restrictions to delink the protests from their targets. So while restrictions might be permissible, these would seem to be extreme and designed to strip the protests of their effectiveness.

Federal law already imposes restrictions on protests at military cemeteries -- one hour and 500 feet -- that are far less onerous and do a better job of balancing free-speech and assembly rights against the right to privacy, which is the conflict at the heart of this debate.

Any infringement on the First Amendment must be limited and must not violate its spirit. The Ruppersberger bill goes too far.
 

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Poetry and electric guitars: Lucinda live in Red Bank

Lucinda Williams learned a lot from her father.

The country-rock songstress -- is it country or rock or some other genre? -- is one of the few songwriters who can rightfully claim to be a poet of the pop song, crafting lyrics of detail and exquisite wordplay that demonstrate a direct link to her father, the poet Miller Williams.

Last night's set at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank offered a cross-section of her career and a healthy dose of songs from her fine new record, Blessed, possibly her best recording in a half dozen years (and that says a lot).

And there were a lot of loud, guitars -- courtesy of the great Val McAllum, who took over lead guitar responsibilities for Lucinda several years ago when she brought Buick 6 on board as her backing band. While I loved Doug Pettibone's playing, McAllum has more range and seems more willing to expand the songs, to take them to a new place live. McAllum's expansive, electric playing never overpowered the band -- anchored by the fabulous Butch Norton on drums and steady David Sutton on bass.

Set list (as tweeted during the show):

1 & 2: "It's Over" and "People Talkin'" to start

3: "2 Cool 2 B Forgotten"

4: Guitar solo on "Tears of Joy" wow

5: "Pineola" -- after five shows. A dreadful, powerful story. Amazing.

6 & 7: "Drunken Angel" & "Buttercup" yfrog.com/h7cpckbj 

8-11: Bunch of the new: "Don't Know How You're Living"; "Copenhagen"; "Born to be Loved"; "Convince Me" 

12 & 13: "Out of Touch" w/guitar solo followed by heavy blues of "Unsuffer Me" 

14: "Essence" yfrog.com/h7mdmwyj 

15: Fats Domino cover -- "I Live My Life" 

16: Oops -- words forgotten to "Righteously"! 

17 & 18: "Change the Locks" & "Honey Bee" -- guitar slinging 

19: Encore: "Blessed" 

20: From Essence "Get Right with God", w/Dylan LeBlanc (An aside: If LeBlanc would have shown a third of the energy he displayed with the guitar on this song during his opening set....) 

21: We found her "Joy" in Jersey! 

22: "For What It's Worth" for the Wisconsin protestors -- encore 2 (actually, for all workers)

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To open: Cliches and acoustic guitars

Dylan LeBlanc opened for Lucinda Williams tonight in Red Bank and offered evidence as to the pretentiousness of the folk revival movement.

With his wobbly tenor and competent guitar playing, he projected the image of a folkie without any of the necessary energy. It is not enough to have long hair and be able to finger pick. You still need to be interesting.

Consider him exhibit A for the prosecution in the case of the People v. the Folk Revival

Remember: Christie was endorsed by several environmental groups

The green groups that endorsed Chris Christie in 2009 probably are wishing they could have that endorsement back. The latest in anti-green measures by the governor and his administration:

AP: NJ withdraws from lawsuit seeking judicial oversight over pollution issues

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Message to best and brightest: Go home

The dysfunctional nature of our immigration system can have no greater example than the likely deportation of Vidal Tapia.

The Paterson high school senior immigrated illegally to the United States five years ago, when he was 14. He became a stellar student and is set to be the valedictorian at International High School.

But he may not get the chance to walk with his fellow students.

Tapia immigrated here illegally about five years ago. Since then, his petition for U.S. residency has been accepted and an interview for a green card was scheduled for Wednesday at the consulate in Ciudad Juarez. But because he unlawfully crossed the border and now is an adult, he is likely to face a 10-year ban from setting foot on U.S. soil, regardless of whether he qualifies for residency status. That would mean no commencement speech in June, no diploma in the near future and no American job possibilities until he's in his 30s.

"I'm here to continue my education. My hope in this country is to become better and better," said Tapia, sitting in a school conference room Thursday. "Having to go back will disturb all that — all my goals."

Had the DREAM Act passed Congress last year, Tapia undoubtedly would be a prime candidate. That legislation would have permitted undocumented students to pursue higher education and citizenship. Tapia has already taken a statistics class at Passaic County Community College and began college-level algebra before being removed because of his immigration status. After completing a 12-week engineering program at Fairleigh Dickinson University, he was offered a $10,000 scholarship to attend the university full time.

But the DREAM Act was voted down, and Tapia now has a plane ticket to Mexico on Sunday, with an entire community behind him fearing he won't return.

Obviously, it is important that we control our borders, though how we do that and what that means for the free movement of human beings is rarely discussed. The debate in the United States has become one in which politicians fight to see who can come up with the most punitive measures for undocumented immigrants and not one in which we dispassionately consider the question of human rights.

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Straight-talk express, Jersey style

Gov. Chris Christie has built a reputation as the latest straight-talker in Republican politics, the descendant of John McCain, a maverick willing to challenge the status quo.

As with McCain, however, "straight" is in the eye of the beholder.

Consider this story from The New York Times:

New Jersey’s public-sector unions routinely pressure the State Legislature to give them what they fail to win in contract talks. Most government workers pay nothing for health insurance. Concessions by school employees would have prevented any cuts in school programs last year.

Statements like those are at the core of Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign to cut state spending by getting tougher on unions. They are not, however, accurate.

In fact, on the occasions when the Legislature granted the unions new benefits, it was for pensions, which were not subject to collective bargaining — and it has not happened in eight years. In reality, state employees have paid 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health insurance since 2007, in addition to co-payments and deductibles, and since last spring, many local government workers, including teachers, do as well. The few dozen school districts where employees agreed to concessions last year still saw layoffs and cuts in academic programs.

“Clearly there has been a pattern of the governor playing fast and loose with the details,” said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University. “But so far, he’s been adept at getting the public to believe what he says.”

Mr. Christie, a Republican who took office in January 2010, would hardly be the first politician to indulge in hyperbole or gloss over facts. But his misstatements, exaggerations and carefully constructed claims belie the national image he has built as a blunt talker who gives straight answers to hard questions, especially about budgets and labor relations. Candor is central to Mr. Christie’s appeal, and a review of his public statements over the past year shows some of them do not hold up to scrutiny. 

Straight as a hair-pin turn.

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Data matters

If we are going to debate the efficacy of charter schools in New Jersey and elsewhere, shouldn't we have non-biased and complete information on student achievement? The answer, I think, is implied by the question.

The problem, as Robert Braun points out today, is that we are being asked to judge charter schools without that information -- with data, in fact, that has been selected to prove a particular political point.

"We are seeing a classic demonstration of how data gets manipulated to support whatever point of view is in vogue," says Joseph DePierro, dean of the Seton Hall College of Education and Human Services.

DePierro, who is a charter school supporter, warned, "It’s a classic demonstration of how not to do research: First assert the conclusion and then scramble to find the data that supports it."

Like other independent researchers, DePierro has concluded there are no significant differences between charter and traditional public schools.

The problem with the numbers, as released, is that they do not compare apples with apples. Consider the numbers from Newark's Robert Treat Academy:

In third-grade language arts, RTA children scored 36.1 points above the Newark district percentage passing rate. In third-grade math, they scored 38.1 points above. Those kinds of scores held true throughout the grades. In sixth-grade language arts, all RTA students passed the statewide test — 65.6 points ahead of the district pass rate.

Great numbers that allegedly demonstrate the difference between traditional public and charter schools in the city. And yet, there is far more than meets the eye here:

According to the state’s data, of RTA’s 500 students, 42.9 percent are eligible for the federal free-lunch program — compared with 71.2 percent of children in the district. By income level, those children are not comparable. Only 6.6 percent of RTA’s students have been classified as disabled, compared with 19.7 of the district’s students. Again, the populations are simply not comparable.

That last part is not something we hear from charter supporters.

To truly judge charter schools and their impact on students and the public schools, we need to start by acknowledging that the populations served by the charters is drastically different than those in the public schools -- the obvious economic differences are only a small part of the equation. Charter students tend to have more involved parents -- parents have to apply for the admission lottery, which is a subtle self-selection process.

And, this is the part we have ignored, we need to do extensive research into what happens in the schools that lose students to the charters. If the students leaving are economically better off or come from more involved families, doesn't that necessarily mean that those left behind are more disadvantaged? Shouldn't we at least get an answer to that question and try to understand what that means for the students left behind?

Whatever your view of charter schools -- I dislike them -- I think we can all agree that we need unbiased research before we make wholesale changes in the relationship between the public schools and charters.

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Can't take the Heat?

The Heat is an enigma. Supremely talented, the team remains unable to marshal its talent late in games and against the better teams. We keep hearing about how they need to learn each other's games, but the season is in the homestretch with fewer than 20 games left. Shouldn't James, Wade and Bosh have meshed by now?

The team, it appears, is at a turning point for the season. The current five-game losing streak (and six out of seven)  -- with the Lakers on deck -- could rip the last supports from the Heat's season. Or it could lead the team to bond. But the last few days -- reports of crying in the locker room, complaints from one of its high-priced stars -- do not bode well.

The Heat have nine games against playoff teams out of its last 18, including games with the Lakers, Boston, San Antonio and Oklahoma City. Orlando, which is closing fast on the Heat, having moved to within three games in the Southeast conference with a somewhat easier schedule.

The fact is, the Heat have gone from the likelihood of facing Philadelphia in round one as the two seed, to facing off against the Hawks as a four seed. Either way, the Heat should be favored, but does anyone really believe at this point that Miami is playoff-ready?

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On the money

In a state with a high unemployment rate and a crater of a deficit, does it surprise anyone that we are spending upwards of $65 million on lobbying. The tighter the money, apparently, the more groups need to spend to convince the state that they need the money.

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Balancing the budget on the backs of the poor

Gov. Chris Christie's budget envisions savings in the state's Medicaid bills, which he says will be instituted through an overhaul that will force the federal government to make changes in the program.

But the plan on table is not so much an overhaul but a rollback that will push more of the costs of the health program designed to help those who cannot afford health care onto the very people it is supposed to help. Christie says "he wants to move Medicaid recipients into managed care" and he is proposing a series of other changes, including cutting reimbursements to nursing homes and a "$3 co-pay at adult day care centers, which take care of more than 12,000 adult residents with mental and physical disabilities. The move is expected to save the state about $1.9 million."

The savings are minimal in the scheme of the larger budget, but as advocates for the poor and disabled pointed out during a hearing yesterday, the co-pays and other changes "would deter many disabled residents and their families from using the adult day care centers. They said the already cash-strapped facilities would then see less money due to declining enrollment."

Christie is right to want the federal government to step in and fix Medicaid -- though I suspect he has little interest in a real fix (single-payer). In any case, this is not the way to go about balancing the state's budget.

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Spicuzzo faces corruption rap

I can't say I'm surprised by this. There have been whispers for a long time about the power of the Middlesex County Democrats and exactly what it is that power was being used for.

It's too early to know how this is going to play out, but it seems that three things need to happen:
1. Joseph Spicuzzo needs to step down as county sheriff immediately.
2. Joseph Spicuzzo needs to step down as county party chairman.
3. The county Democrats need to purge their leadership of Spicuzzo loyalists and start fresh.

Anything less would be to tacitly endorse what Spicuzzo has been accused of doing.

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Public-sector unions are not the problem

New Jersey's public employee unions are starting to fight back by doing what working people should have been doing in this country for years. They are taking it to the streets. The teachers were in Trenton last week; today, it was the police and fire unions. Who's next? As glad as I am to see them take to the street, we have to face the fact that these rallies lack the unity and sense of larger purpose that the Wisconsin fight has had. Workers in the Badger state face the prospect of being stripped of bargaining rights, even after giving the governor every concession he has requested. The issue there is the basic right to organize and act collectively. Here the talk is about saving pensions and medical benefits and preventing layoffs -- worthy goals -- but not necessarily ones that will connect with the larger swath of put-upon workers in the state. And not necessarily ones that will shift public opinion. The teachers, firefighters, police and other public workers need to rally together over several days and they need to frame their demands as more than just protecting what the public has come to see as their cushy benefits. The issue is the final assault on the compact that has governed American working live for 60 or so years, but that has been eroding for the last three decades. The collapse of the private-sector union movement, the labor movements disconnection from the larger social movements of its day (think of the bulk of unionists on Vietnam, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, etc.) and the general assault with government help by corporate America and presidents and Congresses of both parties has left the public-sector unions as the only strong unions in the nation. The public-sector workers need to reconnect to workers at large, find a way to cut past the jealousy that has far too many New Jersey residents saying "take away their benefits." That kind of demand is short-sighted and will only continue the race to the bottom on wages and benefits that has American workers earning, at best, what they were earning 10 years ago, while the top one-tenth of 1 percent of earners -- about 300,000 Americans -- saw their wages more than triple. Public-sector unions are not the problem. The problem is the lack of private-sector unionization and a legal structure that is decidedly hostile toward union building. This is the argument they should be leading with: Stand with us now and we will stand with you later as you fight to revive the working and middle classes.
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The right to be racist

The First Amendment's free speech and assembly protections mean nothing unless we are willing to afford them to the most reprehensible and disturbing speech.

So, while I despise everything that the Westboro Baptist Church stands for and find their use of soldiers' funerals deplorable, I have to applaud the Supreme Court's ruling today:

In an 8-1 vote, Supreme Court Justices voted in favor of the Westboro Church, ruling that the protesters are protected by the First Amendment, no matter how offensive their anti-gay, anti-military message might be to some.

The church and Fred Phelps were being sued by Maryland resident Albert Snyder, the father of the late Matthew Snyder, a soldier who died in Iraq in 2006. Albert Snyder cited “emotional distress” as the reason for his lawsuit. Phelps and his family protested at Matthew Snyder’s funeral with signs that read “God Hates America” and “Semper Fi Fags”.

Nothing that the church has done or does can be defended or should be defended. Its members and views are offensive and hateful. But nothing the church does should be the subject of government interference.

Do we really want to follow the French example on this and prosecute the speaker of hateful speech? Does an anti-Semitic or racist rant warrant a jail sentence of as long "as six months in prison and up to €22,500, or $31,000, in fines"? Should Mel Gibson or Michael Richards have gone to jail, as they likely would have under French law, which "makes it a crime to incite racial hatred"? And who gets to decide what inciting hatred means?


American law, thankfully, protects our rights to be idiots. I prefer it that way.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Rubber-necking a Hollywood wreck

We have a propensity to do this, to get caught up in the speedy downward spiral of some overly hyped, rich and pampered star, to revel in his or her disgusting behavior -- as entertainment, as a way of proving we are better than these rich lowlifes, as a sop to our voyeuristic urges.

We slow down on the highway when we see a car wreck, not because we think we can help, but because we are curious, because we want to see. Police stories are the most popular on news web sites, often not because we are concerned that crime is encroaching but because we want to see, we want to oggle.

So, Charlie Sheen gets to ride the media merry-go-round and we all watch -- and, yes, I did watch last night -- and hope that his drug-addled mind will snap, that his mania will be on full display for our entertainment.

It was sordid, painful and completely unnecessary, as Dan Watson on Neon Tommy points out:

Charlie Sheen, the star of “Two and a Half Men” — who thinks he can live the same fantasy as his character — is sick. And I don’t mean in some “funny uncle” way.
Sick, as in less than a month ago he began in-home rehab. Sick, as in he admitted to doing enough cocaine — “7-gram rocks” — to send him into mania at that time. And sick, as in a score of doctors are saying he is bi-polar.

He is not a “winner.” He is not a hero raging against the corporate machine. He is not playing a joke on us. He is not a serious interview subject.

He is sick.

Tonight was an abomination.

The executives at ABC should be tried in court for enabling a drug user.

They are preying on a sick man. And all the while, laughing at rival CBS — host of Sheen’s wildly successful show.

Sheen, of course, is responsible for his plot in life. He diagnosed himself perfectly in one interview:

“I’m on a drug: It’s called Charliesheen.”

“Tiger blood,” runs through his veins, he said.

Today, he loves himself. Tomorrow, he will hate himself.

Tonight, was, to put it lightly, the most devastating interview I have ever seen. It was also one of the more disgusting things I have ever seen.

And it is not likely to be the last time we see it, and I'm not talking about Sheen and his sordid, tawdry life. Yes, Sheen is engaged in a high-profile battle with his network and a very public battle with his ex-wife,  so the Sheen narrative is likely to be a part of our lives for as long as we wish it to be.

Sheen's story is his own, but it also is part of a larger narrative of American obsession with famous meltdowns. Last night, it was Sheen blathering on, while in the recent past it has been Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears, Mel Gibson, Anna Nicole Smith and far too many other unstable, out-of-control celebs. When Sheen's public meltdown ceases to be interesting, we will move on to someone else.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.