Another Free Press first: Lay off

January 6, 2009 – 5:51 pm

By Joel Thurtell

Lookit what came in my email today — a memo, ostensibly from Detroit Free Press Editor Paul Anger — notifying the staff of a staff position that’s been erased.

Which means, if this note is not a fabrication, that a human being has just lost a job.

Who will be next?

I started on November 12, 1984 and left with a buyout on November 30, 2007 (with a two-year-plus hiatus on strike in 1995-97) and I recall buyouts, reduction by attrition, lockouts and, following the purchase in 2005 by Gannett, firings for various bullshit reasons.

I don’t recall a lay off.

Until now.

Here’s the memo someone sent me:

Reductions to the Yak

Name: Paul Anger

Published on: January 5, 2009 05:35 PM

Yak’s Corner, most recently a half-page in the Wednesday Sports sections, will cease publication with its last issue on Jan. 21. Because of this, the part-time position of Yak assistant editor is being eliminated.

We will continue to maintain the Yak Web site and provide design help for the weekly NIE publication that goes to Detroit elementary schools.

— Paul Anger, Laura Varon Brown


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Posted in future of newspapers | 1 Comment »

“Han shot first,” and all that

January 4, 2009 – 7:38 pm

By Joel Thurtell

Some blaster-totin’ goon’s got the drop on you, threatening to blow your brains out on the spot. No help in sight. Your back is to the wall.

What do you do?

Well, if you’re Han Solo, with the smarmy bounty hunter Greedo aiming his sidearm at you, your first thought is to distract him with some left-handed wall-tapping while your right hand, invisible to Greedo under the table, slowly twists your blaster until it has a bead on the bounty hunter.

The rest is cinematic history: you drill the bastard, of course.

On your way out, you casually tip the bartender and apologize for the mess.

I hadn’t watched “Star Wars” in ages. Knew we had VHS tape copies in the house, but couldn’t find them. Looked high and low. Nothing for it but to head for Blockbuster and rent the movie.

Not as easy as it sounds. First conundrum — which movie? Turns out the one we watched in 1977, the first episode, now is Episode IV. Fork over the money, head home, stuff it into the machine.

DVD, not videotape. Same difference, right?

Hey, this is great. Princess Leia in all her nobility, the young Luke Skywalker, the heavy-breathing Darth Vader, delightful R2D2, sage Old Ben, repulsive Jabba the Hut, and then we’re in the cantina and this weird creature Greedo is promising good ol’ Han he’ll fry him.

I’m ready for this. I love it when Greedo gets his just deserts.

Left hand tapping on wall, watch that right hand, slowly, stealthily, trigger finger moving…

But wait, what’s this? Something about this scene is wrong.

Did Greedo get off a shot? That’s not right!

My son Abe explained why my confusion was justified. Seems George Lucas took the opportunity to be creative when the first “Star Wars” film was put on DVD. Using digital wizardry, he had the scene changed.

He’d decided to put a white hat on Han. Real heroes don’t kill people — even bad guys — in cold blood. If Han shot first, as indeed he did in the 1977 film version, it made Han a cold-blooded killer. According to Wikipedia, the 1977 version, with Han shooting Greedo first, made Han a “morally ambiguous” character whose turnaround late in the movie was all the more significant, dramatically. But Lucas was afraid Han’s bad behavior was a poor example for kids, so he changed it. He had Greedo take the first shot, but missing. Wherewith Han put him down.

There was an uproar about that among “Star Wars” aficionados, so Lucas changed the scene again to what I saw — Greedo and Han shooting at the same time. It still waters down the moral ambiguity and is unfaithful to the historic film. I don’t like it.

But I understand Lucas’ moral dilemma. It’s a throwback to the 1950s and 1960s, when we had a surfeit of cowboy and frontier TV shows that depicted a clear ethic — the good guy shoots last. In a classic high noon showdown, the good guy must wait for the bad guy to un-holster his gun. At that precise moment, the good guy is licensed to blow the bad guy away, but not before.

It’s a morality straight out of knight-errantry, with chivalrous assailants giving each other a noble hand because they’re all good guys, all wearing white scarves.

Ridiculous, but that’s where Lucas is coming from.

He should relax. Han did just fine.

No telling what laws — if any — were in use on that desert planet where Han sent Greedo to his maker.

In many states in the U.S., Han’s killing of Greedo would have been considered justifiable homicide.

I doubt a prosecutor would have charged him. (Hope he had a permit for that blaster!) Had he been charged, his attorneys would have had an excellent argument for self-defense.

According to Wikipedia, in many states, “a person may use physical force to prevent imminent physical injury, however a person may not use deadly physical force unless that person is in reasonable fear of serious physical injury or death”.

There was no way Han could escape. Greedo was aiming his blaster at him all the time and threatening to kill him. Han was therefore justifiably in fear for his life. Lacking a way of escaping, his only means of preserving his life was to kill Greedo. Which he did, quite satisfactorily.

In Florida and Louisiana, Han would have been absolved of any pretense of retreat. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld that right to kill someone who’s trying to kill you, even in a public place and not in your home. So Han had the right to stand his ground when Greedo threatened him with a blaster.

Again according to Wikipedia, ” ‘Stand your ground’ governs U.S. federal case law in which self-defense is asserted against a charge of criminal homicide. The Supreme Court ruled in Beard v. U.S. (1895) that a man who was ‘where he had the right to be’ when he came under attack and ‘…did not provoke the assault, and had at the time reasonable grounds to believe, and in good faith believed, that the deceased intended to take his life, or do him great bodily harm…was not obliged to retreat, nor to consider whether he could safely retreat, but was entitled to stand his ground.”

Han did not provoke Greedo. Greedo provoked Han by promising, blaster drawn and leveled at Han, to dispatch our hero to his Maker. Instead, Han rid the galaxy of a real slime ball.

Next time George Lucas tampers with “Star Wars,” I hope he’ll understand that Han Solo not only saved his own life, but was correct to do so. He needs to fix the film again by putting it back to its original form.

It’s only logical. Because if you’re catering to some “turn-the-other-cheek” ethic, there’s only one way the Greedo-Han confrontation can end. Han waits for Greedo to shoot and gets blown away. Forget morality — that just does not work in cinema.

Think of where that leaves the film: Han lets Greedo kill him. Okay, by movie’s end, where’s the unambiguous hero who’s gonna save the day when Luke Skywalker is simultaneously attacking the Death Star while Darth Vader, piloting one of those evil black fighters, bears down from behind with photon torpedoes blazing?

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

.

Obi Wan Knobe, the sand runts or whatever they call them. I’m really getting into this when Hits the tavern and the bounty hunter, Greedo starts making dire threats, aiming his blaster at Han.

I’m waiting for this great scene where Han, back to the wall, no way out, distracts Greedo with his left hand while aiming his own blaster at the creep from under the table. One shot and Greedo is no more.

Except it doesn’t happen. Not the way I recalled it. The scene just isn’t clear. So we watched on.

Next day, our son Abe is home and I’m telling him we watched Star Wars.

Fsat forward toThe arguments.

Legally, he was in the right. back to wall, threatened by gun-totin’ goon…


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_shot_first

Han shot first — so what?


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Posted in People, censorship | No Comments »

The new deep pockets

January 2, 2009 – 11:22 am

By Joel Thurtell

Time was when government officials would whine that citizens’ lawsuits were busting their budgets, that litigants were aiming at the perceived money-lined deep pockets of governments.

Now it’s the governments, strapped for cash in a lousy economy for tax revenues, that are targeting deep pockets.

Whose pockets?

Ours.

And those of businesses perceived as rich and likely to have the money that governments lack.

One way for governments with police departments to raise income is to write more traffic tickets. Detroit area police agencies have become notorious for handing out tickets. George Hunter of the Detroit News reported on Nov. 17, 2008, that the National Motorists Association rated metropolitan Detroit the worst in the country for speed traps. 

The city of Plymouth wrote 440 tickets in 2002. In 2007, Plymouth cops wrote 2,584 tickets — a 487 percent rise, according to the News. Detroit nearly doubled its ticket production. Southfield’s ticket writing jumped by 131 percent. Dearborn Heights advanced its ticket writing by 60 pecent, Livonia by 49 percent.

Speed traps are one way — arbitrary, capricious, regressive, but effective — at bringing in money to governments with shrinking revenues.

Turns out there are other sneaky ways of imposing arbitrary taxes.

Used to be, police and fire officers responded to emergencies because that was, well, what they were about. It was their job.

Not now.

Seems governments have set their sights on a new set of deep pockets.

Utility companies.

With winds hitting 60 mph this past week, it was no surprise that more than a few electrical lines came down. Why, 230,000 DTE customers lost power.

Downed lines may still conduct electrical current, so it has been normal for cops and firefighters to guard them until utility repair crews show up to fix the damage.

The cops and firefighters still show up. The difference now is that in some towns, they’re billing the utilities for the time they spend watching the downed lines.

“Babysitting these power lines” is what Groveland Township Fire Chief Steve McGee calls the service his firefighters perform safeguarding citizens from electrical wires.

A good, stern babysitter is what’s needed to discipline public officials who think they can extort exorbitant fees from anyone with money in a wallet.

Incredible, but true: Ferndale is charging $250 an hour for a fire engine run to a downed power line and $40 an hour for each cop and firefighter involved in protecting citizens, according to a thoughtful story by Joe Rossiter of the Detroit Free Press.

Royal Oak charges $400 an hour for a fire engine and $50 an hour for each public safety officer.

DTE is outraged, given that the company already pays property taxes on extensive land and equipment holdings throughout meto Detroit.

I don’t blame the utilities. The wind is not their fault.

Remedies come to mind:  Next time power lines go down in Ferndale or Royal Oak, how about simply cutting off electricity to the entire town?

Let them fix their own doggone lines.

Problem is, the residents are not at fault for ordinances enacted by buffoons masquerading as elected officials.

The situation reminds me of what happened some years ago when the city of Plymouth thought it could ticket CSX trains blocking traffic on city streets. I happened to write a story for the Free Press about the train blockages, and I quoted then 35th District Judge James Garber telling me how every so often Plymouth city attorneys and railroad lawyers came into his court to settle the fines, which could amount to $100,000 per court visit. Nice little gravy train for Plymouth.

Judge Garber remarked that CSX regarded the tickets as “the cost of doing business.”

CSX lawyers read my story. They didn’t think they should have to pay that particular “cost of doing business.”

Next thing Plymouth knew, CSX had the city in court defending its ticket-writing.

Guess what — Plymouth lost.

No more railroad tickets in Plymouth or anywhere in the state.

The courts yanked Plymouth’s hand out of CSX’s pocket.

I suspect that, as with the CSX case, this latest effort by communities to extort taxes from utilities will wind up in court.

DTE does have pockets, and it can pay good attorneys, just as CSX did.

Taxpayers could wind up paying this bill two ways. First, DTE may convince the Michigan Public Service Commission that — in the words of Judge Garber — community “babysitting” fees are the cost of doing business and should be passed on to consumers.

That’s us.

If that doesn’t work, DTE could simply tell those towns, as CSX told Plymouth, “See you in court.”

Guess who pays the city’s court bills?

I’d prefer that, though, because the court costs wouldn’t be spread over all of us DTE customers.

Those greed-blinded communities that are trying to suck service fees out of DTE seem to have forgotten that without the utility’s electrical generators and overhead lines, their towns would be in the dark, wind or no wind.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com


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