Stuck In The Middle 1220
Wednesday, June 29, 2005-11:50 A.M.
Ouch. What a mess I walked myself into yesterday.
I was waiting on an itinerary for this week's shows in West Palm Beach. When I didn't get it right away, I panicked, wrote and called the booking agency and told them to consider me cancelled, and picked up a Saturday date that another booking agency was scrambling to fill. I was settling for less money, but to me, less was better than nothing.
Today, booker "A" called me and straightened things out, which means I had to call booker "B" and cancel the date I just took, three days before the gig. So now I'm at the Lady Lake public library, posting the booker "B" gig on the internet and hoping there's a comic in the area who can fill in. This sort of thing doesn't happen very often to me, but it's common in this business, so I really get uncomfortable when it's my turn.
Dammit.
Well, what's done is done, and now it's time to get on to bigger and better things. After allowing my head to clear, and talking about it a little bit with my father, I am definitely going to run for public office. My wife also thinks it's a good idea, but she's a little more cautious than I am. I seem to be convinced that my charisma will carry the day, but Pam's a little more grounded in the facts that I have no experience, no money, and little name recognition outside of Rochester, NY. So I will procede cautiously, and try to do what good I can inside my sphere of influence.
In the meantime, I drew up about 30 or so platform planks that I will undoubtedly be questioned about, and I will answer a few of them today, and a few more tomorrow, and so on, until I've covered just about everything of interest (and more, I assure you). If there's a topic you believe I haven't touched on that you would like me to address, please e-mail me at YuksOnMe@aol.com and I'll make sure that I get to it right away.
These topics are addressed in no particular order, but I will try to include topics of interest in the areas of social concern, fiscal concern, and then throw in a few issues of my own that I believe are given short shrift in political debate...things nobody thinks about or talks about, but are important nonetheless.
ABORTION
This topic seemed to sway a lot of folks in the last Presidential election. John Kerry's comments that he was a good Catholic and was even an altar boy when he was younger, but still supported stem cell research, seemed to turn a lot of folks off. I was raised Catholic, but stopped going to Sunday school in the third grade. My attendance was so bad in the second grade, the nuns told my parents that they needed to hold me back a grade. This made me an object of ridicule amongst the public school students whom I attended classes with during the week who attended Sunday school with me on the weekend; after all, who gets left back a grade in Sunday school? Apparently, me. So I stopped going all together. Years later, 1993 to be exact, I got mixed up in drugs (cocaine, to be exact), and giving my life and trust to Christ was the only thing that helped me in the recovery of that treacherous time. I'm still not a regular church-goer...I'm usually driving home from somewhere on a Sunday morning, having performed shows out of town on Saturday night. So I'm not exactly in lock-step with the traditional Christian stance on abortion. My attitude is simply this; my wife and I have a beautiful, healthy baby girl that we wanted, planned on, and are prepared to support and raise. We are in the 100% range when it comes to deciding whether or not to have a baby is a good decision. Some folks don't have that luxury. Pure and simple. If a woman is raped and becomes impregnated, should she be obligated to carry her attacker's baby for nine months, and then give the child up for adoption or raise the child herself, a living reminder of her trauma? Is that a Christian decision to require her to do that? I wouldn't make that decision for someone. The woman's been through enough. How about a woman who becomes pregnant, and through ultrasound technology or other investigations, the doctors conclude that the child wouldn't be totally healthy? I worked with a woman who gave birth to a child who didn't have all of her spine and heart. The child died four months after birth. Is it Christian to allow a child to go through the pain of all the procedures that were tried in those four months to keep the child alive, even though everyone involved knew they were grasping at straws? I think abortion, even though I detest the idea of using it as after-the-fact birth control, needs to be allowed and used when the situation dictates. Every situation is different, and to pretend that one sweeping policy will cover all and make it good is ridiculous, small-minded and wrong. And if you try to tell me that human beings shouldn't have the power that God reserves to determine life and death, then I say to you...
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
...is wrong, too. Pure and simple. Lifetime imprisonment in solitary confinement is worse than death for crimes that are barbaric and heinous. And, if the State finds out that an individual is wrongly imprisoned, they can let the guy go! It's a win-win! And if you complain to me that the cost of lodging a criminal for life is expensive, it's actually right about the same as the appeals process for a death-row inmate. And without tying up valuable court time. The end.
TAXES
This is a touchy subject. People hate it when you mess with their money. But that's the point, isn't it? Poor people don't object so much, because they have less money to mess with. There are actually laws that protect poor people from having their money messed with because at some point, lawmakers decided that you can't deny someone the basics of life (food, clothing, shelter) once they start hovering near the poverty line. I, myself, flirt dangerously with the poverty line every day of my life. I have a wife and a child, and a job where work comes in fits and starts (read the above account way up at the top). So I understand the passion with which both the rich and the poor feel about their money. As the middle class dwindles away, the rich will soon have to bear the tax burden. And I mean all of it. My conservative brother, whom I love even though he is a callous nitwit, whenever we discuss this, says "You can't punish the rich for being rich." I don't mean to punish the rich. But if you overtax the rich (and no one will ever come up with a rate that is fair...high-paid accountants will always find a loophole), you will not deny them the qualities of life. And as a matter of fact, if you do overtax the rich, and dump the money into programs that help the poor, you get the benefit of a lot less poor people mugging, burglarizing and robbing the rich to put food on their tables. A hungry, sheltered guy usually doesn't go out and get a gun and cause trouble...I believe Elvis covered this in his song "In The Ghetto." And if that cracker hillbilly can get it right, what's wrong with the rest of us?
HEALTH CARE
The Hippocratic oath, the oath that doctors take to treat every patient, regardless of their right to pay, is a sacred one. However, hospital adminstrators, HMO personnel, insurance agents and the like do not take this oath. Catostrophic injury or illness can and does strike everyone, with little regard to financial worth. If all men are created equal, like the Declaration of Independence says, then don't we all deserve equal care? If you stand idly by while people go without proper health care, prescription medication, life-saving surgeries or other processes, there is a special place in Hell for you, my friend. Denying care is a by-product of greed, and I won't have it on my watch.
SUPERHEROES
You heard me, jackass. Why don't we have any? We've got amazing technologies in place already...how come we don't have a Batman or an Iron Man? All they are is normal guys with good technology. You can take a picture with a phone, program a computer to launch a missile that will hit a target the size of a loaf of bread 3,000 miles away, send real time information about temperatures on Mars all the way back to Earth, you'd think we'd have a Super Soldier or two flying around New York or Los Angeles keeping the peace. We certainly could have used one on 9/11, huh? And people like superheroes. They stand for Truth, Justice and the American way, they give kids role models, people to look up to, and finally, they give color newspapers like USA TODAY something interesting to put on the front page. Wouldn't you love to see a front page color picture of Spider Man webbing some terrorists or drug dealers to a lamppost? I sure would. I think we need to start working on this stuff right away. It sure would make the world a lot safer than some politician sitting at a desk wondering whether or not the wording of a law was correct or not.
More tomorrow.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
