Royalty, to the trash bin NOW

In September of 1982 I was home on leave in Birch Run, Michigan taking some time before heading overseas for four years. My parents were both at work so I answered the doorbell one sunny midmorning. It was a saleswoman. Immediately, she started gushing excitedly about the marriage of Prince Charles to Diana and that the result of that union had just yielded another little royal named William.

I cocked my head and grinned; I actually felt embarrassed for her. She was trying to sell me some kind of commemorative plaque or chinaware or something like that revolving around this cockamamie British royalty BS and I was having none of it. She noticed the wry unconvinced look on my face and stopped talking. She knew she’d run into a definite “no sale” and just asked me if my wife was home.

I told her, “Sure, my wife is here, but she’s from the Philippines and doesn’t know a Prince Charles from a Fred.” So much for that, the young saleslady went on down to the next house to try her luck there.

Even before I ever much contemplated the notion of royalty I was dubious about it. Then, over the years, after considering it every so often when it would come up in the news, I eventually came to the conclusion that the idea of royalty is nonsensical. In fact, the more I know about them—the royals that is, and especially the British royals—the more I came to loathe their continued existence as an institution.

What upsets me more than the survival of modern European royalty is that much of my fellow citizenry continue to fawn over them, as if “these people” are worth even a moment of our attention and even less of our respect.

My fellow Americans, (and fellow commoners!) do you understand how “these people” came to claim these ridiculous titles such as king, queen, prince, princess, duke, earl, duchess, ad nauseum? Well, I’ll tell you. They are nothing more than an invention; a ruse foisted upon our European “peasant” ancestors to convince them that “some people” were anointed by God to be their rulers and betters.

Does it not anger you then that people would continue to hang onto these kinds of obsolete notions? Americans especially should reject this crap, but for the most part, we don’t. It seems like we can't wait to scrape, bow and curtsy all along with the rest of the mindless fools everywhere who kowtow to these pretenders.

It’s pathetic when you think about it. The very idea of royalty is that God, through his divine intervention, caused certain bloodlines to be superior to others. This was rule by divine right—to be “God’s chosen,” so to speak. You would think that a secular Europe would stop lending credibility to this archaic convention, but they don’t. In fact, they seem to embrace it more than ever.

In America we fought a war 200 years ago not just for independence, but also to rid ourselves of idiotic concepts like “the divine right of kings.” My ancestors from Scotland and Ireland left the Old World to escape European heavy-handedness, and much of the excesses from which they escaped were due to their being stuck as “subjects” of a monarch and his royal henchmen, all generally titled as “Sir So-and-So.”

Being a subject meant being “subject to” the capricious whims of some duke or earl, all “sirs” mind you, and all due to the mistaken notion that these people are divinely better than people without the “correct” bloodlines. Almost 300 years ago my Scottish immigrant ancestors finally just said, “kiss my arse” to that idea and left all that garbage behind; and I agree with that sentiment every bit as much today.

A “subject” is someone who owes allegiance to a king or queen, not necessarily to a country, not to freedom, not to a constitution, but to a flesh-and-blood person. That is old-fashioned archaic malarkey and yet the Brits still officially talk about owing allegiance to the Queen. Even our Canadian cousins to the north still consider themselves her highness’ “subjects.” If they can stomach such a thing then fine, but for Americans to continue to worry about how to correctly curtsy or bow to Queen Elizabeth is a nauseating thing for me to watch.

Speaking of the Queen, she came across the pond to “the colonies” not long ago, and much of the talk on the news was of the various foul-ups committed by just about any “crass” American who came within spitting distance of the old girl. I think Nancy Pelosi made a supposed booboo when she reached out and shook QE’s hand without the queen having proffered hers first. Oh my word! And when President Bush made another of his continuous speechifying faux pas and then turned and winked at the queen, from the reaction you’d of thought he’d just asked her out for a date. Unforgivable! I could hardly stand to watch and listen to any of that idiotic drivel and mostly didn’t.

I had the opportunity the other day to speak to an expatriate Englishman on this very topic. Mark is his name, and with his deeply tanned, well-muscled sleek physique combined with his long sun-streaked brown hair, he looks more like a surfer from Southern California than a Limey. He’s a good fellow and I thought I’d ask him how he and his “mates” feel these days about the British aristocracy.

Basically, he had nothing to say about the royals at all, and certainly nothing good to say about them. Mark claims that most of the people he knows back in the UK, including him, think it a complete waste of government money. He reminded me that there’s a heck of a lot more to the royal lineages than just the queen and the princes. He reminded me that the whole country is pocked full of these royal bastards, as he referred to them.

I asked him, “Why do you guys put with it? I mean, think about it Mark, these arrogant jerks have the gall to call someone not of their bloodline to be MERE commoners! Doesn’t that irritate you that they would dare to continue to call people COMMONERS? I mean for chrissakes, that’s the height of arrogance, don’t you think?”

“Oh yah, a lot of us have had it with them. But what can you do? And truthfully, I just don’t think of it all that much. I just ignore them.”

I yielded a little saying, “I have to say that I DO think it’s a good thing that Harry and William are serving in your military, but it almost seems like they do it more out of some kind of guilt complex or because its expected of them. I just wish some of OUR rich boys would find it within themselves to serve, but we haven’t had rich people like that since World War Two. So GOOD for the princes!”

Concerning the royals, for the most part what I got from English Mark was indifference, as if he has better things to worry about. Still, considering how little he cares about the queen, a woman he’s supposed to be pledged to as a citizen of England, his blasé attitude says a lot. It tells me that if most of the “commoners” of the UK feel as he does then perhaps the future of British royalty IS very much in question.

If I were British, I’d demand the immediate dismantlement of all things royal. I would consign its trappings to the trash heap of history. At the very least I'd consign them all to a musty old museum, the perfect place for old irrelevant things.

Part 5 of "Broken and in Pieces" in Angeles City

My friend’s journey back to two-legged wholeness continues to plod slowly and agonizingly along. It will be long and painful.

(To see how this mess started, here are parts 1, 2, 3, 4).

Four of us, all retired military, sat around his hospital bed and cursed the heavens and local powers that be, while discussing the newest clarifications of the “accident.” For the first time I got a chance to actually speak to my friend’s witness, and probably his savior, the drinking buddy who luckily came outside and saw what really happened.

Speaking of which, you are NOT going to believe the very latest development. Actually, it’s good news, although it’s the type of good news that is hard to stomach.

Here’s the deal. My hospitalized pal asked his lawyer to find out what the cops’ intentions are; plus, he wanted to know when they were going to return his drivers license and motorbike. He also wanted to know any "terms;" in other words, what the hell did they have on their crooked minds? So here’s the part you wouldn’t believe unless you live here, and living here for more than a year or two, to us, what we found out makes total sense!

My buddy can have his license and much-pilfered bike back, but ONLY after he signs a statement agreement. This fictional pact will state that yes, he did indeed maneuver his bike into the road without looking, and by doing so, cause a motorcyclist coming from his left to strike him, after which, it careened off into some vendors’ stands.

Of course, the fact that said motorcycle and rider never actually existed is the trumpeting circus elephant in the living room. Not to mention the outrageous fact that this made up police report never even acknowledges the ACTUAL culprit, which was the jeepney operating without lights and approaching from the wrong side of the street. In fact, the cops claim that this jeepney and its murderous driver and his two beefy menacing passengers do NOT exist, at least as part of the incident. Obviously, this is a case of “things that make you go, hmmm?”

Also obviously, it appears that the men involved in this homicidal scam—and it seems there were more than a few—they simply want the whole thing to go away, especially after things did not go as they originally planned. Being foreigners here with no one to look after us, we all agreed with our victimized friend that taking “the deal” is better than trying to exact justice and insist on the truth. In essence, that word is nonexistent here.

Our job as outsiders is to survive the occasional attack by sharing these sorts of lethal con games with as many of our fellow expats as possible. Even so, we know that they, the monsters out there in the dark, will manage to take down one or two of us every so often. Now I know what a whitetail feels like back home during hunting season—just got to keep quiet, keep your head down, and hope they shoot Bambi instead of you.

Another horrible realization is what was probably really in store for my nearly slain buddy, and it ain't pretty. It seems the fact that he had several foreigner witnesses at the scene of the impact so quickly is probably the real reason he is still alive.

Why do I say that? Well, speaking to the primary witness I learned that the driver and two of his henchmen on board his jeepney were exceptionally large and brawny fellows. This was a regular off duty checkpoint jeepney driven by a guy who most certainly was NOT a normal jeepney driver. Guys that size around here are employed as security men, or as “muscle” for endeavors leading to “no good.” According to the witness, as soon as the “knock down” happened these big muscular fellows jumped out and ran to the front of their vehicle looking for action.

Their plan is now plain to see. The idea was to either kill or to so injure their victim that he would be easy to scoop up and throw into the back of their jeepney, along with their victims motorbike as well. Then, they would have sped off into the night to a non-public place, where at their leisure, they would have finished off their prey and taken all his stuff. He would have either disappeared forever or his body would have been discovered in the next province over, minus most of his clothing and ID of course.

That scenario happens more often around here than people know about or want to acknowledge. When I used to volunteer in the VFW office, every so often the PNP would come by and pass around a photo of some very dead white guy seeking his identification. There is no CSI here, at least not for us, and none of the killers of those unfortunate dead men has ever been found, much less prosecuted.

The point is simple: Be careful. My buddy says he’s learned the following about barhopping in Angeles City:
1) NEVER stay out too late.
2) Use a fellow foreigner friend to be a “running buddy;” using a local might not always work since they are too easily cowed by corrupt powers-that-be, making them almost useless.
3) Do not wear nice clothing; instead, wear jeans, shorts, t-shirt or tank top.
4) Do not wear an expensive watch or ANY jewelry.
5) Buy a cheap cell phone for barhopping use; nothing showy or extravagant.
6) Drive a car if you plan to stay out till midnight (not a motorbike).
7) NEVER carry a wad of bills on you, and if you do, NEVER pull it out to pay a tab. Keep a small amount in one pocket to use for paying, and if you must pull out more than a thousand pesos at a time, do it in a restroom stall where no one can see it.

Chances are, lesson-learned number 7 is the reason my friend became “marked” for destruction. He thought he was being discrete while paying for his drinks, but you know how that goes. There are lots of eyes in the bar and you never know which watching set is looking to pass on what they see to partner ne’er-do-wells.

So, that is just a few more things to keep in mind while barhopping in “Sin City.” Keep your head up and stay ahead of the wolves looking to cull you out from the rest of the foreigner herd. It’s really no different than in any other disadvantaged country; but it’s easy to become complacent here because no one SEEMS dangerous, and clearly, that is NOT the case.

Part 4 of "Broken and in Pieces" in Angeles City

My friend’s leg is coming along slowly; for him, this last 10 days has been the longest year of his life. It’s been just a week since two orthopedic surgeons spent about 5 hours of surgery pushing and pulling the splinters of his shattered lower leg back into line. They used a fixator, which is a cylindrical metal cage from which metal pins are affixed and pushed through the flesh of the leg and screwed into the various key pieces of bone. This cage keeps his lower leg bones still and fixed so as to promote proper healing, hopefully. (To see how this mess started, here are parts 1, 2, 3).

The doctor says it takes about 6 weeks for bones to reunite. After that, we’ll see how many of the shattered individual pieces of bone have survived. X-rays show several small floating shards that will probably have to be removed and replaced with bone grafts from the hip, another very painful procedure.

In the meantime, he’s lying there and thinking about the rats that did this to him. We are quite sure it was a put up job of assault made to look like an accident. The fact that the cops drove past twice and would not stop at the accident says a lot. Not to mention that their “investigation” did not even include speaking to the victim, or as they were want to claim, “the perpetrator,” NOR to the one real witness who saw the entire event start to end. AND, we still don’t know if charges will be filed. Fact is, the driver of the lightless jeepney who veered directly into my friend’s path SHOULD be the one in trouble, but we all know that “its ALWAYS the foreigner’s fault” in these here parts.

Another outrage is what is happening to his motorbike. It was picked up and “stored” in a “secure area.” My bedridden buddy has sent one of his pals to look at it and take pictures of it every few days or so. At first it was chained up with another bike that was supposed to have been the bike he caused to crash, something we know never happened. Well, that one has now disappeared. The outrageous part, or one of many, is that his scooter is slowly being taken apart and disappearing. Lights, running boards—you name it—the pieces are “migrating” away somewhere.

We are still worried about possible retribution from the people who did this. It looks like a bodyguard or some other form of security might be in order. At this point, he says he knows he can do nothing about the people who did this; he just wants to get better and move on, and probably move away. As one of my buddies just told me today, “It’s a foreigner’s word against the locals', and we all understand what that means.”

I know one person who understands the above concept implicitly, Lance Corporal Daniel Smith, still falsely accused and unjustly convicted of rape, and now continuing to languish in the US embassy during the slow motion appeals process.

It’s oddly pathetic the reaction I get from many of the local expats that I’ve told my friend’s story to in the interest of warning them. Most want to know “what did he do to attract that kind of attack?” It pisses me off to no end; it’s like blaming an attractive girl for being raped. No one wants to believe that this can happen to them. Funny thing is, I know for certain that if I had warned my broken legged friend two weeks ago that this could happen to him, he would have argued bitterly against ANY such possibility.

I can hear him now, what he would have proclaimed. Very adamantly, he would have protested, “No way. Not me! I take way too many precautions and I’m MUCH too careful. Maybe it could happen to some ignorant tourist just passing through, but NEVER to me!”

XXX

Famous last words, and for how many more of us? ...continue to part 5...

The Fall of the Son of Sal

The other day I wrote something on celebrities and how we pay way too much attention to them. In it, I quoted something a buddy of mine once said about major league baseball players. This buddy was Joe Maglie, the adopted son of the famous pitcher Sal Maglie, also known as “the barber,” because of his effectively intimidating strategy of pitching inside and high.

With a heavy heart I learned a terrible thing about Joe. While researching for my previous post I found out that he was busted last October, in 2006, on child pornography charges. It seems that he got caught up in a sting.

The articles I found online state that an under-cover Internet detective got Joe to offer to sell him some child porn. That’s all the evidence the police needed for a search warrant, which was served without delay. I read that there was a prodigious amount of kiddy smut stored on two of Joe’s computers located in his home or office, well up into the terabyte amount; enough to download onto hundreds of CDs. Now THAT’S a lot of filth.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, Joe and I were pretty close pals. We were both still in the Air Force serving in the same unit on Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas. Joe was a staff sergeant working as a comptroller; and I was a master sergeant, doing my thing as an aircraft maintenance inspector specializing in avionics. I helped him move twice and we played golf a time or two. He was a basically a good guy and a good friend, someone who was always there for his buddies.

What I remember most about Joe was his continuous involvement in the community. There was not a charitable organization that he wasn’t involved with, and he used to drag the rest of us his Air Force mates, including me, into volunteering as well. With all his benevolent deeds, it seemed there was no one he didn’t know—whether it was the mayor, or local newscasters, and all sorts of other regional celebrities. The base commander knew him by name, which is pretty impressive for a lowly staff sergeant.

I remember asking him if he was related to “the barber,” and he gladly told me, “Yes, he adopted me. I’m his son.” At the time, his pops was still alive, but I guess he was not really in the world anymore due to Alzheimer’s or some other similar mind ruining disease. It was always great talking to Joe about his dad, because he would gladly explain what it was like being around big league baseball as a kid. He even signed a baseball card of his dad for me.

Overall, I knew Joe to have a good heart and he did lots of good. That’s why I’m so sorry that he allowed himself to fall into this child porno trap thing. When I saw the story I felt bad for him that he had descended in such a way that he had basically destroyed his own life, but I was also very angry with him for the harm he was doing due to pure sinful selfishness.

The detectives are quoted that Joe had in his possession countless digital recordings of child molestations. I hope like hell that he wasn’t involved in producing any of it, but even if all he did was download it from file sharing and distributing it, in effect, he was contributing to the very acts done to those children. It’s like drugs—if no one used them… Well, you get the picture.

I know Joe, and I know that intellectually he understands how wrong it was to do what he was doing. The only person he can blame now is himself. I hope his example will influence others to stop it, if they are involved in similar activity. Aside from the terrible harm its doing to innocent kids, on a personal level, it’s just not worth it. Delete it and stop viewing it. Do it for yourself and for the innocent babies, toddlers and young children in the world. They are being horribly harmed by YOU.

Perhaps if you are on the fence on this subject, you should keep in mind little Madeleine McCann. That poor little innocent angel was probably scooped up and swept away from the loving arms of her family, perhaps forever, all because of the same decadent malevolence that Joe Maglie was evidently involved in.

I haven’t lived in Arkansas since 1998, and I don’t really know anyone very closely there anymore; so I don’t know what ultimately happened to Joe. The most recent information that I could find concerning his child porn charges was that he was out on bail for $5,000 and would go in front of a judge for a hearing in December 2006. For all I know the charges were dropped; or, he was found guilty as hell and is sitting in a cell right now. Either way, I hope he’s looking deep within himself and vowing to do good for the rest of his life to atone for all this.

As I said though, I hope to hell that he had no play in making any of this terrible stuff. If so, he should serve a long sentence. Still, regardless of where he is and what he did, I know he has a virtuous side. There is good and evil in all of us, and because of my years of associating with him I know that there is hope for the guy.

Having said that, I hope he comes out the other end of this thing a better man, even if it’s a better OLD man.

They are JUST people, same as you and me...

Celebrities, Who Cares?

I’ve had it with “them,” and I’ve especially had it with the pundits who report on their every move while practically gushing all over them. And what about the suckers who swallow all the pap as it’s fed to them whilst clamoring for more? I think of them this way: if there were no “users” there would be no “suppliers” and “pushers.”

For all you “users,” why do you do it? Is your own life not interesting enough that you must suck the marrow from someone else’s? Are you not ashamed? I hate to use this cliché, but get your own life.

Every time I see footage of paparazzi clambering bodily all over each other while snapping their shutters at sports and movie stars, or at “stars of the moment,” I feel disgust; not only for the photographers, but also for the people who pay to see their rubbish; and you know who you are.

For consumers, the “users” of this nonsense, you suffer from a bad habit, like looking at pornography or smoking; so stop it; you should stop buying it; stop looking at it, and you should stop turning the channel to find it.

When I was 14 or 15, my father and I were playing a late afternoon round of golf at a public links course in Central Michigan. Some country music star, whose name I am no longer sure of (maybe it was Earl Scruggs?), was out by himself on the course with us. During our game, this famous performer was on a tee box only a rock’s throw away. My father discretely pointed him out to me with a slight nod of his head and a whisper. My natural kid’s reaction was to stare and remark aloud, but my father quickly shushed me and instructed me adamantly NOT to stare. It wasn’t polite and bordered on being disrespectful he told me. My dad realized that the man probably didn’t want to be disturbed and I learned that day to respect that wish for everyone, even and especially for celebrities. It might be a very old-fashioned and American Midwest attitude, but it made sense to me then as a kid and continues to make sense to me even more today.

I suppose if we hadn’t been on the golf course and my dad saw Mr. Scruggs in passing he might have politely said hello to him. But my midwestern father would never force himself on anyone, and why would he? How many stories have you heard of celebrities being interrupted for an autograph, or a photograph, during a meal in a restaurant, or while trying to enjoy the view on a beach? I don’t buy the argument that a star or a public figure sacrifices their personal life once they “make it.” That is pure rationalization; it’s nothing more than justification for bad behavior.

Late in 1975 my parents came to the Tri-City Airport at Midland Michigan to pick me up after I had just earned my Eagle-Globe-and-Anchor with the Marines. My mom told me that Jim Stafford, a successful pop singer at the time, was waiting for his flight out of town. In spite of myself I thought I’d go see, kind of like a covert recon mission. Sure enough, he sat alone in a large waiting room; it was just him in a sea of rows of seats. I could have gone up to him and announced myself as a fan, but I couldn’t get myself to do it. He seemed relaxed and I just did not want to bother him; it just didn’t seem right. He saw me in my green Marine class-A’s and nodded at me smiling. Feeling foolish, I grinned back, gave him a wave and a thumbs up, spun around and left him alone. That was the only time I’ve ever done anything like it, and it confirmed for me the rightness of leaving so-called famous people alone.

I once served in the Air Force with the son of a famous major league baseball pitcher, Sal Maglie. Joe Maglie, Sal’s adopted son, told me that he had met or been around pretty much every major leaguer of note from before the 70s. I asked him what they were like. I named one huge player after another, seeking to know if he had met them—Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Al Kaline, and on and on. Yep, he’d met them all; either in locker rooms while his dad was coaching and managing or at dozens of reunions. I asked him what they were like. His answer was intriguing.

“Man, let me tell you something. For the most part, those guys are boring. All they know is baseball, so it’s all they talk about. They are not interesting to talk to UNLESS you want to talk about baseball. They aren’t even all that intelligent. What do you expect? For the most part, they’ve limited themselves to baseball their whole life. Phil, I find people like you a hell of a lot more interesting than most any big league baseball player. You’ve lived all over the world and you’ve done things the average major leaguer cannot even conceive of. They are nothing special man. They’re just ball players.”

Joe was right. We give these people way more attention than they deserve, and presumably more than they want. When is society going to get a collective conscience and leave these people and their immediate families alone?

If you must, go watch their movies, or watch them play their games; but for heaven’s sake, find a new hobby or pastime. As Joe said, “these people are nothing special,” no more so than any human being.

Common courtesy and standards of decency demand that we leave them alone. Can you find it within yourself to grasp that notion? They are just people like you and me. Get it?