Say What?

So I am watching this detective show on TV and the victim this week is a woman who is found naked in an alley.  She has been beaten to death and then raped afterwards.  In the next scene it is determined that she is a lesbian and the detective says, "I think we have a hate crime."  Say what?  Stripped naked! Beaten! Murdered! Raped! but it took sexual orientation to bring "hate" into the equation?  Now, obviously, anyone victimizing another person because of their sexual orientation is completely, totally repulsive and their crime should be punished severely.  But to use "hate" in the way we do when referring to "hate crimes" trivializes the concept of hate, and seems to departmentalizes "hate" to only being a factor with certain types of crimes.  ANY murder includes hate, ANY rape includes hate, AN Y beating includes hate.  If it was necessary to have a class of crime that involved motivation as a defining factor  it would have been good to find another word other than "hate" to differentiate those horrible acts from other horrible acts. 

Getting Snowed

I guess the whole snow thing is ultimately about priorities or preferences.  Some people have to have the sun shining all the time, others are perfectly fine with bundling up or putting on a fire and staying in.  Here in Virginia lately it has been all about hanging out inside, reading a book (I just read a biography that was so poorly written that I lost interest in the subject of the biography... the guy kept writing, "as previously mentioned..."), watching bad TV, shooting some darts... all good things.  So do I miss California where the sun shines all the time (a myth)? Absolutely not!!  The wife and I are enjoying the seasons.  Makes us think that God and Roger McGuinn got it right when they wrote "to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven." 

Making sure people get the information they need is more important than someone getting information that is useless to them.  A priorities issue again.  If you can keep harm and unpleasantness away from many, is it worth a slight bother to a few?  Abso-friggin-lutely!!!  Yet some prefer to or are at least willing to sacrifice doing the right thing in order to appease those few. 

What do the above two paragraphs have to do with each other?  Well, I think they are both to the topic of the posting.  "Getting Snowed" is a phrase that infers someone is getting fed false information, given bad advise or in some way deceived.  Weather that alters your normal path can be perceived as something bad but in reality it is a chance to look at life from a different angle.  In the case of sharing information we can't let ourselves "get snowed" by those that think controling the information is more important than the content.

Thanks for listening.  I promise to be a bit more coherent next time.

Rob

Where did the Comedy Film posts go?

I have moved all my non-Laurel or Hardy posts to a new blog:  http://www.aljoyfanclub.blogspot.com/.

All my Laurel or Hardy stuff will still be seen at http://www.laurelorhardy.blogspot.com/.

I am going to keep http://www.treborenots.com/ for my radical, right wing, self righteous rants and sharing of my other hobbies and interests other than film.

You now know more than you'd bother care to know.

Thanks,
Rob