The Thin Gray Line

I have only been writing columns and blogging for about six years. Over that time I never found it necessary to write one of those alphabet soup pieces comprised of random odd and end thoughts.  As much as many of the great writers of the day have done so, I always found it lazy, kind of as if they mailed it in.  That’s just me. Similarly, I never repeated a segment on my morning show from one hour to the next, unless it was mandated by the station’s business log.  I figure if I am being paid, or expected to provide content, I should put my back into it.

It do allow for one exception, which is in the unlikely event that my small brain ever sees a common thread among an otherwise seemingly disconnected collection of stories or ideas.  In such an instance, I reason, I can justify it because such a piece will be even harder to write.

That time has come. 

 Shakespeare once said something to the effect that nothing was right or wrong, that thinking makes it so.  It is an interesting premise, indeed one that has given rise over the millennia to religion, philosophy, humanism, the law and the worlds various political systems.  Mankind has struggled with the question, and will, no doubt, until the end of time, or unless there really is a second coming.  Even within our best efforts to modify the behavior of ourselves and others, through our bibles, codes, statues and boundaries, there are always difficult questions, gray areas, if you will.

A recent story in the New York papers told of 19 year veteran of the NYPD who was so reliable and revered that he was trusted to guard the mayor and his children.  This man was two months from a lifetime pension when, showing up to his girl friend’s house he saw an ex-boyfriend, who had been under an order of protection to stay away, leaving the premises.  He fired on the intruder hitting him in the buttocks.  

The story is not a clear one.  The cop’s girlfriend said the ex had broken in with a knife as a thief.  The shooting victim’s story is that the women was playing both men.  He mentioned this from jail where he is serving time for forgery. The once honored detective is going to jail for seven years and lost his entire pension.  The lady friend is, once again, an eligible item. 

My take:  The law does not allow it, but anyone under an order of protection should be a target for all hunters, police officers and, well, just about anyone with a weapon, if they are at their former victim’s residence.  Yes, the cop broke the law.  As the judge said, the smart thing would have been for the detective to call 911, report the description of the guy, and comfort his girlfriend.    But there is just something wrong about a man, after putting in 18 years, and 10 months and doing what many protectors might do in a fit of bad judgment, losing his pension and his future.  Maybe when Bloomberg is no longer mayor, he will send this guy some money and give him a job.

Another case out of New York smacks of a double standard.  I have all kinds of opinions on this one, and even they don’t agree.  A female school teacher who had frequent sex with a 16 year old boy up until weeks  before his 17th birthday(they also exchanged 4000 texts),will do no jail time.  Okay, I know what your thinking, boys; it should have happened to you.  Oh, and girls, get off your high horses. I do not know a man who does not agree with this, at least in his fantasy life.  The fact is, though, that it is wrong, it is damaging and it is a crime.  Will this particular boy be hurt by it? Who knows?  The real story here is that if it was a man he would be doing a lot of hard time, and we would not be pondering any fantasies or leniency.   Indeed, the ironic twist is that this is a double standard, enjoyed by women, resulting from men’s adolescent attitudes towards sex.  Yes, yes, guilty as charged, when not thinking.  But I am trying.

The mother of all gray cases in the news lately is the rat, I mean, whistle blower, who threw the NSA and thus our country under the bus.   This case has more gray than an uptown hair salon.  Edward Snowden’s heart was likely in the right place.  Like all of us, he grew up with notions of right and wrong and that we Americans put principle before practical considerations.  That still is a guiding principle when possible, and sometimes when painful.  See the cop story above.  But what our young leaker failed to understand is that in nation to nation relationships, life is only played by the rules after security and self interest are assured. 

Had our callow wannabe hero spent more the hitting the books…he dropped out of high school…his obviously high intellect might have grasped the reality of what political scientist call real-politic.  He would have understood, perhaps, that power, and thus security, is often purchased in blood, deception and near criminal confidentiality.  Snowden, as do all of us I this country, lives on the other  moral side of the gray line, a line secured, ironically, by much that is unnecessarily amoral, even immoral.  It is, shall we say, adult.

Snowden also might have spent some time in the streets.  For all their questionable activities, street kids, of whom I am proud to call myself one, know that a rat is someone not to be trusted.  A sad observation I have made of some of our young people is that their self righteous, sophomoric sense of entitlement and outrage seems to have prevented them from possessing this ethic.

Now the risk is always there that in our effort to provide security…and I agree and have written that we have gone too far… will overreach with too much control given over to the government.   Our timidity since 9/11 has tacitly endorsed this condition.  So the kid is right to be worried, but wrong to let it out.  So too the company that hired him needs to punished severely. I did better background checks on my daughter’s play dates.

Snowden needs to be punished, but not destroyed, unless as his own father says, he crosses the line toward treason.  Somehow a well meaning boy was given an adults job he could not handle.  Even for us grown-ups, it is sometimes hard to know right from wrong.