Enotes

In a perfect world, Derek Flemming would have been able to march up to the driver of a car that cut him off, express some anger, and get back into his own vehicle---without fear of losing his life. The 43 year-old husband and father of two young children would have vented his anger and frustration and still lived to re-tell the story to friends, co-workers and family at every opportunity. We do that a lot, you know---turn storyteller when we are wronged, whether it's from poor service at a restaurant to being incredulous at a retailer's return policy, among other things. But then we get it out of our system and we move on, until someone else relates a story that fires your mental file cabinet into gear and your story gets retold yet again. But Flemming paid the ultimate price in an act that unfortunately will have people---like yours truly---getting into "blame the victim" mode. Flemming was gunned down at a traffic light near Howell after he allegedly comp...

Can you imagine the world we would live in if we were all judged based on things we said or did when we were young and foolish? Actually, if you are a celebrity, you do live in that world. If we could whip out an instrument, not unlike a defibrillator, and measure what's in Paula Deen's heart at this very moment, then maybe she wouldn't be persona non grata right now. Maybe she wouldn't be hemorrhaging support from her network and from her endorsement clients and she wouldn't be kept away with a ten-foot pole by her on-air colleagues. If we could go into that ticker of Deen's and find out whether she is, today, an abhorrent racist Southern belle, wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't it save a lot of angst and hurt feelings if Deen's true views of those of color were as easily determined, were as black and white (no pun intended), as the fact that she, once upon a time, used racial slurs? Deen, fired by Food Network and dropped by Smithfield a...

Limbs lying on the sidewalk, unattached. Shrapnel filled bodies, including those of children. Smoke. Buildings with windows and concrete blown out. Screams from the injured and the maimed, fighting to be heard over the sirens. Scenes from a battlefield, perhaps. Or from a war-torn, third world country. Not in the United States. Not in downtown Boston. Not at the Boston Marathon. The scenes of war have once again been played out in the streets of America. Once again our soil is sopped with blood of the innocent. The limbs were torn from the unfortunates who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But is there ever a right place, a right time? How can there be, when you can be sitting in a movie theater and realize too late that you're not a sitting patron but a sitting duck for a crazy with a machine gun? How can there be, when little school children are mowed down in their classroom? How can there be, when a stroll across a college campus suddenly turns into a run ...

The Sesame Street Muppets have become such a part of our social consciousness that I don't think any of us really stop to think that the Muppets aren't living, breathing creatures---we must remember that they're puppets, controlled and voiced by living, breathing humans. Humans, as in imperfect beings. The face of Elmo, one of the more popular Muppets, was ripped off in a shocking and vile manner recently, revealing that its puppeteer, Kevin Clash, has been allegedly involved, in the past, with some hanky panky with at least one underage youth. Two accusers came out against Clash, who is openly gay. The first recanted, saying that the relationship was consensual and legal (age-wise). But then a second accuser surfaced, and this one says that he and Clash became involved when the former was just 15 years old. The second accuser has slapped Clash with a $5 million lawsuit,  claiming he (the accuser) had only recently become aware of "adverse psychological and emo...

So what do you say when you're released from death row after 22 years, for a crime that you maintain you didn't commit? "Took 'em long enough." Those were the words of Paul House, who was convicted in 1986 of the rape and murder of Carolyn Muncey in Tennessee and then sentenced to die. So let's release him and immediately nominate him for Understatement of the Year. State prosecutors on Tuesday asked a judge to drop all charges against House. Special Judge Jon Blackwood accepted the request. House's cause was championed by a group called The Innocence Project, which is affiliated with the Cardozo School of Law in New York. It took the U.S. Supreme Court to get involved, though. House was scheduled to be re-tried next month, nearly three years after the high court ruled, 5-3, that he was entitled to a new hearing. "Although the issue is closed, we conclude that this is the rare case where -- had the jury heard all the conflicting testimony -- it is mor...