My Big Fat American New Year

Our New Year started off with a bang.

My husband and I wanted to do something special but we didn’t want it to be controversial or – god forbid – educational.

We considered going into The City to see a play, and prepared for our trip by waiting in line at the drive-thru window of our local pharmacy to refill needed prescriptions (restless leg/irritable bowel/overactive bladder/depression/anxiety/chronic fatigue/PMDD) and then proceeding to the bank’s drive-thru to withdraw funds for the estimated $385 it would cost (donuts/gas/insurance/tolls/parking/snacks/admission/beverages/drive-thru-donuts).
But then we remembered there were rumors of labor strikes forcing many plays to shut down.
These “strikers” almost ruined our New Year. What’s wrong with them?

The City is a scary place anyway filled with unsavory characters, so we were relieved to skip the play and see a movie - but not at the Mega Mall Movie Theatre Complex where "undesirables" could roam in an unsupervised manner (and high on whatever). No. We went to a little independent movie theatre in a quaint seashore town known for its (increasing) separation of the "haves" (on one side of the railroad tracks) and "have-nots" (on the other).

When I entered the theatre, an employee gave me a special promotion. The offer seemed phenomenal - yet confusing - but I think it worked like this: Every dollar spent, you earned one point. Spend $50 (50 points) and that entitled you to free (small, unbuttered) popcorn. Three hundred points entitled you to a movie pass (weekends, holidays, after hours excluded). I think five hundred thousand points entitled you to a $10 gift card.
(I don’t know how businesses make any money these days.)

Anyway, we moved into the crowded theatre to see the film: "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead” – which we heard was a family film - something about your distinctive all-American white collar family, living in a white four-story colonial (with black shutters), in a typical suburban neighborhood.

The story centers on the relationship between the two brothers.
The oldest brother, Andy, is embezzling money from his employer, a high-profile real estate conglomerate. Andy has a Park Avenue drug habit (not the kind that "cracks" open jail cells for people of color). He snorts cocaine on the top of his filing cabinet before going into a corporate meeting about an impending IRS audit. Hey, who wouldn't?

His wife, played by Marisa Tomei is mostly naked in the film -in almost every scene - every 15 minutes or so. And then some. Quite frankly, I'd seen more of her than I cared to.
I think my husband was glad we skipped the play.

The other brother, Hank, is four months behind in child support payments to his ex-wife who is a nagging, sniveling, denigrating hag. She does not have a scene or any dialogue in the movie where she is not hurling four letter words at her ex husband. Hank’s family loathes him, and Hank feels that pain by screwing Andy's wife (every Thursday morning between 10 and 11). Hence more naked scenes with Marisa Tomei.
Oh boy.

Despite all this family bliss, Andy and Hank decide to rob their parents business - a jewelry store that has been in the family for generations. All this conniving, planning, and possible jail time will net them $60,000 each. Each!
What dopes. I mean after taxes, they'll get only half of that!

During the robbery, all hell breaks loose. The mother tries to ward off the robber with a hand gun she has hidden in her....well, I dare not say. She manages to shoot the masked robber (who Hank hired to do the job because he is a big baby and doesn't even have enough courage to steal from his own mother). The robber - although wounded - is able to shoot the mother. There's lots of blood. The mother ends up in the hospital - brain dead - hooked up to machines that keep her alive. The family has to decide whether to pull the plug on mom.
I understood that part.

(As you can see, women are well represented in the film.)

In the aftermath, Andy laments: "Why couldn't it have been dad, instead of mom?"

The police are not looking into the crime so the father takes matters into his own hands after his investigation reveals his sons’ involvement. He grabs a gun and follows them during a bloody shooting spree (is there any other kind?).

I understood most of the film except the part where the father confesses that he was a bad parent. I’m not sure what dysfunctional leadership has to do with ensuing chaos.

I won't tell you the ending in case you want to see the film. But I think the moral of the story is black and white: Behind violence is the absence of color…and the presence of crude, capitalistic opportunities that benefit a very few.

Oh…and crimes against humanity come with a heavy price.
Especially if the Devil Knows You’re Dead: Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is!

Lynn NOTTV
Copyright 2008

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Freeze Out

Seven days before the start of my sophomore year in high school, my family was homeless.

Oh, I don’t mean that the way it sounds. It wasn’t like we were living out of the back of our Pink Cadillac, freshening up in the bathrooms of Esso gas stations. No. What I mean is that at the end of my freshman year, we vacated the house where we lived during that school year, visited friends for several weeks (surprise!), and then moved into a two week end-of-summer bargain rental where we sent our Greetings from Asbury Park.

When that lease expired, my family – father, mother, 5 kids, 1 dog, 2 cats – would be moving to another yet-to-be-disclosed location.

We weren’t house-less. More accurately, we were home-less

And no matter how often we relocated – a dozen times in ten years through eleven towns, seven school districts and from coast to coast – it wasn’t easy, but I’d take those days back in a heartbeat. Because I noticed that no matter where we lived, the citizens of this nation had something you don’t see much today: Passion

In the 1960s and 1970 - every single day – people were standing up for what they believed in, marching and protesting for equality or civil rights or against the war.

What was interesting is that the media – our public airwaves - actually covered these actions. The people’s voices were reported.

Where is that passion today? I feared the answer to that question. And then I saw Bruce Springsteen’s interview in October on 60 Minutes:

"We’ve seen things happen over the past 6 years that I mean I don’t think anybody ever thought we’d see in the United States. When people think of the American identity, they don’t think of torture, they don’t think of illegal wiretapping, they don’t think of voter suppression, they don’t think of no habeas corpus. No right to a lawyer. You know…those are things that are anti-American."

The mainstream media’s goon squad - in their zeal to deter any and all criticism of this administration - immediately began their assault.

Monopolistic Clear Channel dusted off their 2003 internal memo – which came to light in senate hearings on radio consolidation during the Dixie Chicks boycott – that threatened: “Just wait and see what happens if Springsteen tries this.” They sent an order to their stations not to play any songs from Bruce’s current album.

Other critics lamented why Bruce changed from singing about people’s personal struggles to Washington DC politics.

Everyone knows that people’s personal struggles have nothing to do with DC politics.

Some columnists stated that even his songs regarding war weren’t political. They were about the soldier.

Of course. There is absolutely no relationship between war and soldiers fighting halfway around the world in lands where they don’t speak or understand the language, culture, or history, with their fingers on the trigger of a Colt XM 177.

I mean how can someone with only a high school diploma, and from a small, blue-collar, working class American town – whose classmates were deployed to “fight the yellow man” in Southeast Asia in the prime of their lives - know anything about the big issues? Stuff like that never shapes your life. Instead, it takes a Yale University and Harvard Business School graduate – worth millions of dollars - to adequately express the intricate relationship between the common man and the common man in fatigues.

Even (the character) Bill O’Reilly (plays) got on the bandwagon calling Bruce un-American and a pin-head. Of course O’Reilly relied on his usual specifics to dispute Springsteen’s comments: “We don’t torture. It’s bull.”

There you have it. Prove positive.
(By the way, why is it after I watch O’Reilly I crave a bologna sandwich?)

My favorite criticism came from Tommy DeSeno, an Asbury Park attorney who wrote in his column for The TriCity News: “Bruce, DC politics isn’t your skill. When the subject was music, you spoke majestically. You were Shakespeare”. An interesting analogy indeed - especially considering that this author of Henry VI also wrote: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

Bruce, you might decide to take the (right) hint and forgets all this political stuff. It can get you into a whole mess of trouble. Consider the words of Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camara, a man who spent over 70 years tending to the impoverished citizens of his nation. He had the audacity to speak out against censorship, torture and killings. He implored the Catholic Church to move beyond charity for the poor by tirelessly advocating for fundamental social changes like land ownership: “When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked, ‘Why are they poor?’ they called me a Communist.”

I’ve got that home-less feeling again: This is America?
Still, I’m hopeful that Bruce’s observations stir a passion in our citizens that proves to be Magic-ally delicious.


Lynn NOTTV
Copyright 2007

Oops, I did it Again!

The bullet that ripped through Jane’s young flesh came without warning and while she was absorbed in her daily routine. When the 800 mile per hour lead projectile entered her skin, interrupting circulation and alienating ligaments and arteries, blood discharged instantly from her mouth. Before she hit the floor, another bullet sliced a major organ in two. By then the die had been cast. There would be no more birthdays, no holidays, no wedding dances, no high school reunions, and most of all, no classes in Lamaze. In her final moments, she tried to speak, but the result was suffocating silence. When the gunman’s deadly spree ended, they found her body floating in blood and urine.

Jane’s mother attempted to claim her daughter’s body, but collapsed in the morgue before she could view what remained. Mom spent a week in the hospital, and missed the funeral. It’s just as well. The sight of that black hearse would have killed her.

If you assume Jane’s death was a result of the bloody campus rampage at Virginia Tech, which claimed the lives of 32 people and was – by all media accounts - the worst massacre in the history of the United States, it was not.

If you think she might have been killed at Columbine eight years earlier, think again.

How about that office building in San Francisco where a man gunned down eight and wounded six? No, wrong again.

How about:
Stockton California School (1989)?
University of Iowa (1991)?
Richland High School (1995)?
Frontier Junior High (1996)?
Jonesboro, Arkansas (1998)?
Southwood Middle School (2004)?
Platte Canyon HS (2006)?

No.

OK how about:

The Long Island Railroad shooting?
The Amish school in Pennsylvania late last year?
The upscale mall in Salt Lake City a few months back?

No. None of the above.

But at this point, does it really matter where she met her fate? Suffice to say we kill each other. And ironically, life goes on.

Thousands have been slaughtered by gunfire in our schools, our malls, our public places. Over a million have been killed by guns since the 1960s. I won’t even talk about the billions in medical costs. And nothing changes. Because the people who control the people who control We the People have it all figured out.

It works like this: After the carnage, the man in charge gives a speech to subdue the nervous public. At Virginia Tech it was President Bush who rushed to make an appearance lest he loses any “quality” media time (and who can blame him). As required he: Invoked the Lord, quoted scripture, and offered condolences.

When he was done, it was back to business as usual.

And anyone who dares to intervene, who tries to talk sensibly about guns and violence and protecting our children, and who is not in agreement with this system’s lock-step approach to handling any issue regarding our social well-being will be…well…shot down.

Talk about holding people hostage!

Apparently it wasn’t enough that we had already been thru decades of massacres in our own backyards when Bush allowed the (10-year old) Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) to expire just two months before the 2004 elections. The people who voted for him that year – and we’re not sure who they were (and probably neither are they) - possibly did not know that fact. At news of the AWB lapse, gun makers were reportedly “salivating”.

The following quote, published 9/14/04, is from a website that opposed the Ban:

“The AWB has made it illegal for a citizen to own or purchase magazines with capacities larger than 10 cartridges that have been manufactured or imported after the ban was made law.
The intent of having a smaller magazine capacity is that a criminal could not fire as many shots as rapidly, therefore reducing the ability to kill or wound more people. However, the statistical evidence showed:
‘The ban has failed to reduce the average number of victims per gun murder incident or multiple gunshot wound victims.”

The killer at Virginia Tech purchased one of his (increased-magazine-capacity) weapons on eBay – probably using his credit card. Now I ask: Can it get any easier?

I might point out that lifting the ban certainly failed to reduce the number of victims as well.

I wonder if our forefathers, when drafting the Second Amendment, had the vision to consider online auction warehouses as gun merchants. And endless credit to pay for it. Probably not. But then again, I’ll bet they didn’t count on America turning into a nation that is (comfortably and numbly) distracted by media reports of Britney Spears, Faux News, and pundits ranting about bleeding heart liberals. That is, in between the advertisements that control our daily lives.

Life takes Visa.
So they say.
And sometimes, Visa takes life.


Lynn NOTTV
Copyright 2007

Click here: YouTube - Veteran Suicides, PTSD, and Election 08': DOES AMERICA CARE?

“I’ll take Public Education for $500, Alex”

Recently, my husband and I celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary - although he likes to tell everyone he’s been happily married for 10 years…and not in a row. Some wives might have trouble with that assessment. But I think it is fair – especially considering the fact that when we married - only one of us had chin hair.

What caught me by surprise was that after the wedding, I was immediately deployed to my father-in-law’s political boot camp, a rugged, in-your-face training facility - from which there was no escape - and where inductees were educated on the depth and gravity of society’s issues and resultant impact on the welfare of mankind.
Oh boy.

It is one thing to plan a wedding, a life together as husband and wife, but quite another to be held captive in a never-ending forum of systemically-examined social, political, and economic education.

What the hell had I gotten myself into? The marriage I could handle….but this?

Step aside Bob Eubanks. This was not going to be The Newlywed Game.

Over the next two and a half decades there was never an occasion - a holiday, celebration, or meal - at my in-law’s where macro-socio-economic conversation wasn’t front and center and thoroughly analyzed. Time and again - in between bites of food, choruses of Happy Birthday, and spontaneously shouted responses to Wheel of Fortune - we were relegated to consider contemplative answers to political decisions made by our (elected?) officials – and more importantly - how they impacted the masses, commonly known as We The People.

For most of those exchanges, I would sit politely and nod my head (as if) in agreement. In general, I felt that I had little standing on which to disagree, let alone voice an opinion. This stuff (so I thought) was way over my head, not merely because I often have trouble working the toaster, but also because my only previous political education was in November of 1963 when, at the tender age of seven, I overheard a paternal relative discussing President Kennedy’s assassination by commenting: “I’ll bet the media will flog this for days.“
(Note: That observation proved wrong. The media has been flogging it for decades).

My father-in-law’s discussions were nothing if not passionate, and were primarily focused on social ills that revolved around the relationship of labor, worker’s rights, class struggles and economic conflicts. In order to make his point, he would examine the words of Abraham Lincoln:

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Labor can exist without capital, but capital cannot exist with out labor.

or

Benjamin Franklin:
All social values are produced by human labor

Or any number of individuals whose progressive thought, intellect, history, and tenacity helped turn America into the Republic for which we stand.

Over the years he’s filled my (politically) empty head with interesting terms, ideologies, and philosophical considerations. What started as a struggle for me to understand grew into a natural comprehension of society. I thank my father-in-law for his dedication to educating everyone (and I mean every one!).

To widen his listening audience - and key our citizens in on areas that beg for necessary discussion - he might consider writing questions for Jeopardy.
If he does, I imagine they might look something like this:

What egalitarian society – whose foundation stands on the words ‘liberty’ and ‘justice for all’ - would tolerate:
Poverty among the riches, endless wars, fear mongering, torture, corruption, cronyism, expanding inequity among the classes, consumer protection agencies headed by former employees of the industries they are supposed to be regulating, decreased funding of education (the cornerstone of any informed citizenry), slashed budgets for vital social services, wholesale auctioning of public lands and national treasures, decreased transparency of government actions, an economic system dependent upon an insatiable appetite to consume, the consolidation of power into two parties with a single agenda, and a suffocating national debt that is (only to be) passed on to future generations?

Or this:

A deaf ear to overwhelming public opinion?

And of course the obvious:

Actors for President and uneducated weight lifters as governors?

Oh boy.

I began this column by discussing a union between people that has endured – not because of inequality, deceit, injustice or covert operations – but because of inclusion, continual education, transparency, communication – and peaceful resolutions to problems.

The literal meaning of democracy is People (demos) having Power (cracy).

While completing this article, I notice that our major media outlets are discussing the current administration’s desire to take us into what they term “World War III”.

Is that what the majority of the citizens of this nation want?
Do you feel empowered by that decision?

If not, then you’ve got to speak up.

Start by saying: Can you hear me now?

Lynn - NOTTV
Copyright 10/07

Enter at your Own Risk (in theory)

One of my jobs around the house is not to load and run the dishwasher. Of course, that’s ever since “the incident.”

It happened one afternoon as I was roaming around the house with a dust rag and a can of pledge. I had cleaned just about every surface I could find when I spotted it: The closed doors (protecting and guarding) my husband’s precious little wet bar. He wasn’t home at the time so I figured what the hell.

When I first opened the doors, it was like a rush, a power trip. I was invading, damn it; and it felt great. Somebody take a picture!

The place was amazing, filled with all kinds of fascinating objects. I grabbed one particular interesting-looking mug, and placed it in the top rack of the dishwasher with other barware. During the appliance’s hour-long cleansing sound, I hummed and scrubbed.

When my husband arrived home we went out to eat, and I forgot about the dishwasher until the next morning.
That’s when all hell broke loose.

What went into the dishwasher in one piece came out in three. And apparently it wasn’t just any old container. Oh, no. It was a 95-year-old Croatian pilsner glass that my husband’s mother’s grandfather crafted on the island of Olib prior to WWI and which my mother-in-law had just gifted to her only son for his 50th birthday, the week before.
Oh, boy.

My husband wanted to know why I didn’t notice the hand-painted floral designs stenciled in gold delicately throughout the glass. Or the inlayed miniature cherry-tree leaves decorating the lower four bands that circled the glass, just above the hand-hammered copper base. This stunning antique had survived bombings, artillery raids, and occupation. It had withstood jurisdictional changes, Ottoman Empire exchanges, and regional rages. It had tolerated immigration, relocation, and Yugoslavian generations. But not our dishwasher.
Oh, boy.

In response to his question, I pushed my shoulders back and arrogantly said: “Well it didn’t say anywhere on it that it wasn’t dishwasher safe”.

In order to save myself, I had to develop a plan…and quickly.

The next day, I took the broken pieces to my office and asked for the referral of a good glass repair guy – preferably someone named Pierre - and whose nickname was not “Breaker”.

The first co-worker I approached, Mr. “D”, was dumfounded by my actions - not with regard to the dismantled glass - but with respect to the fact that I had the audacity to venture anywhere near my husband’s bar.

The second was kindler and gentler. He said he knew of a guy who might be able to repair it but “probably not to its original condition.” And it would take some time.
Oh, boy.

I waited eight weeks - eight long, agonizing, heard-it-already-I-get-it-already-won’t-do-it-again-all-right-already weeks. Finally I was told: Mission Accomplished. And I must say that I thought the glass guy did a bang up job….so to speak.
I was thrilled to bring it home.

My husband, however, looked at it differently. He put his family’s precious item through the beer test, the taste test, and the smell test. It passed. What it failed was the “look” test. You see, in order for the glass guy to repair it, he had to whack off two inches from the bottom of the stem to get the surface flat enough to re-solder it into the partially-melted/disfigured copper “foot” section.
The result was a pilsner glass that tilted to one side.
Oh, boy.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I heard the glass guy had to go to the emergency room because he lost his eyesight. Apparently, he used a new high-tech laser tool but neglected to read (important) operating instructions which clearly stated that workers should “not attempt to use device without wearing protective eye gear”.

The emergency room doctor had to call in a specialist, an ophthalmologist from another state, who had seen this kind of thing before and could render an opinion and course of treatment to recover (some of) the vision.
Oh boy.

Upon hearing the prospect of her husband’s condition, the glass guy’s wife had a heart attack and spent five days in intensive care...that is, before she was transported to another facility. I might mention that their daughter gave birth to their first grandson the next day. Last I heard, he had not yet “seen” the child.

I guess you could say that the sentence of not being allowed to load and run the dishwasher seems light considering the circumstances. And in five years or so, all lawsuits should be settled.

Most importantly, I learned a valuable lesson that I’d like to pass on for what it’s worth: Touching things that aren’t yours – on the pretense of trying to make them better - when your real objectives are self-serving, can get you into a whole mess of trouble.

Oh, yes, and watch out for things that go snap, crackle, pop. They can be dangerous to your health.

Lynn - NOTTV
Copyright 09/07

Moral Aptitude

Ken Lay is alive and well and living in South America. At least that’s what some people say. And that’s what some people think. I guess it’s because his demise was the most timely death in the history of corporate-fraud-greedily-scamming-investors-and-American-citizen/employees (and don’t forget-little-old-ladies-from-Pasadena-struggling-to-pay-their-electric-bills).

How in the name of God Bless America did the founder and CEO of Enron get off so easily?

At least, that’s what some people say.

I don’t know. His death from heart failure on July 5, 2006 occurred just weeks after he was found guilty of 10 counts of fraud and conspiracy relating to the collapse of Enron – at one time the nation’s seventh largest company - four years earlier. He was facing 25 to 40 years behind bars. To that fact, some people say: “Pardon me?”

It certainly is true that the last few years have not been good for your run-of-the-mill honest investor or pension plan recipient. As the Enron stock was declining in late 2001 – months before the inevitably declared bankruptcy on December 2nd - the “buy” orders from the Florida pension plan administrator just kept rolling in. It’s too bad then-governor Jeb Bush didn’t step in to save the day. As chairman of the Board of Trustees for Florida’s pensions, he could have halted the $355 million in losses that pension recipients (school teachers and other public employees) took up the wazoo. Would you believe that Florida’s pension took the largest hit and the losses were three times greater than those of any other state retirement fund? Who would have thought? I guess sometimes those Bush brothers just have bad timing. Or really good timing. It’s all a matter of how you look at it. Of course, there were also the securities dealers, brokers, accountants, investment bankers, journalists, financial analysts and other “oversight” agencies that could have sounded an alarm. I think it’s fair to say that fiduciary responsibilities were just totally in the crapper.

I remember that from the time Enron filed bankruptcy, it seemed like every other month - over the next few years - we heard stories about one multi-billion dollar company after another admitting they cooked the books and defrauded investors. As an American citizen, of course, I was concerned. As a CPA, I was, on one hand outraged, and on other trying to defend my profession. In that regard, I think that what these executives – CEOs and CFOs at Enron, WorldCom and HealthSouth - should have done to explain their actions is taken the advice of Ed Norton who said to Ralph Cramden on the eve of his IRS tax audit: “Just tell them you were drunk when you prepared your taxes.”

Wait a minute; at the congressional hearings didn’t these guys repeatedly take the fifth?

They certainly had capitalized on an unscrupulous intoxication.

And it seems that there is a trend (at the top) for no one to take responsibility for their actions. After the Enron collapse, President Bush signed legislation called The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Hey, no one (else) is gonna fool the public on his watch! The purpose of The Act, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, is to “reinforce investment confidence and protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosure.” Section 406 of The Act states that “The SEC shall issue rules that require each issuer to disclose whether or not, and if not, the reasons therefore, such issuer has adopted a code of ethics for senior financial officers.”

I’d like to see the “if nots and reasons therefore”. You know the excuses for not having a go-to guide for morality. Because everyone knows that without an actual written Code of Ethics, senior financial officers would allow all hell to break loose. Apparently people don’t know enough to be morally responsible without looking at words assembled together in paragraphs and printed on pieces of paper. Let’s see, should I set up fictional subsidiaries offshore to hide losses boosting current financial position long enough for me to sell off my stock, makes millions, hide the profits, ruin employees’ retirement and citizen’s investment portfolios – all the while smiling and running a propaganda machine that declares everything is fine and dandy?
Tough call.

The fallout from Enron, and the resultant Sarbanes-Oxley Act hit the accounting profession hard. The volume of the law, increased oversight, and connect-the-dots accountability is enormous. In addition, CPAs are not able to renew their licenses without taking a class called “Ethics.” I’m no dummy. I signed up right away for the course. The instructor began the session by posing the following questions: Where do ethics come from? Your parents? Your community? Your peers?

Those are areas I’ve certainly contemplated. Because during that class I was thinking about a tax client I had in the mid-1980s – a woman who had recently separated from her husband of 30 years and had never filed a tax return on her own. In early February of that year, during the preparation of her return which was very easy and straightforward –prepared pro bono - I told her she would owe a small amount of money and instructed her to file and pay the amount by April 15th. Every week, for the next eight weeks, she called me with a frantic question about her return:

(1) “The box boy at the Acme told me I have to declare my state refund.”

“Only if you itemized the year before” I responded.

(2) “The man who cleans my windshield told me I can deduct the cost of commuting between my first job and my second.”

“Yes” I replied “But your second job is across the street from your first.”

And my favorite

(3) “My friend Martha’s son’s girlfriend’s neighbor’s cousin’s roommate’s sister said….”

You get the picture.
Who was this woman?
My mother

I’m not sure if one’s background, community, or environment can predict future behavior. I’m certain it can influence it – one way or another. There are twists and turns at every learning curve in life. And then there that’s darn imprinting thing. You know, watching and absorbing subconsciously. In the end, who you are and who you want to be – morally – should absolutely fall under the radar of decency. Perhaps it’s not too late to sign Bush and Cheney up for an ethics class.

Ken Lay was the son of a Baptist preacher from Missouri. I assume he spent many years listening to sermons about right and wrong. Who would have thought that little Kenny would grow up to be so morally deceitful – and on such a large scale?

Where is he now? I don’t know. But I do know that – for me – being able to perceive right from wrong is so easy a caveman could do it.

Lynn - NOTTV
Copyright 05/07