“The Fine Print”, by Michael Schrader

The Swine Are Airborne!

(Written and posted 25 January 2003)

“Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s...”

“Pigs?!”

AND NOW A LATE BREAKING NEWS FLASH. THIS JUST IN. Pigs are flying.

Let me predicate this column by saying a few words. First, this column will not be my typical column, as it will be more wordy. Yes, I know, hard to believe that I can actually be MORE wordy, but I can. Now on to the second, and more important item...

As most of you know, I am not a fan of the Texas Republicans. I don’t appreciate their smug self-righteousness, and I didn’t appreciate the computer worm they sent to me when I was running for Dallas County Judge. I have no use for any of the leaders of the Texas Republicans (T-Pubs, for short), be it the Dicks (Armey and Cheney), Tom (DeLay), Newt, Trent, Jesse, Strom, or my dear friend John. I don’t have any use for the lackey boy that the somehow foisted unto us and who is now squatting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Frankly, I think we need to round up all of the Texas Republicans, remove them from their lands, forcibly march them in the bitter cold across the country and resettle them in lands nobody else wants, like, I don’t know, Detroit. (Hmm...I get the feeling of deja vu...) However, despite my strong personal feelings about the T-Pubs, I have to agree with them on several key judicial issues now bubbling up. Now that you’ve recovered from your heart attack, look out the window at the aforementioned pigs. I bet you never knew swine were so talented, did you?

The three important issues are the renomination of Charles Pickering, the renomination of Priscilla Owen, and the University of Michigan affirmative action case. I will go in order.

As you may or may not know, the Dems blocked the nomination of Pickering to the Fifth Court of Appeals when they controlled the Senate by not allowing the nomination to be voted on on the Senate floor. This stunt was pivotal in the Dems losing control of that august body, because it was a really childish thing to do. I guess the Dems were afraid that some of their own party would defect and vote to confirm Pickering, and so the way to prevent that from happening was to eliminate the possibility. Why, you ask, are the Dems so opposed to Pickering? Many, many years ago, before I was even old enough to read and write, Pickering wrote a law paper in support of Jim Crow. Now there are several reasons why I can’t understand the big fuss. First, people change over time. Look at George Wallace. The man who was an avowed segregationist won his last term as governor on the strength of the minority vote. Imagine that! I know that I have changed over time. There are things that I did twenty years ago that I would not dream of doing now. We all make mistakes, and as long as we learn our lesson and not repeat the same mistake again, we should be forgiven. But that is not the case. Both sides of the spectrum have nothing better to do than rehash a bunch of old stuff that doesn’t have a darned thing to do with the here and now. Get over it. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. We all have moments of indiscretion.

When Pickering was growing up in the Deep South, Jim Crow was a way of life; it was all people knew. Unless people are exposed to other ways of living, they cannot be expected to embrace them. I grew up in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood, where just about every kid I knew went to the local Catholic school. Growing up, I was only exposed to one worldview--the Catholic one. Yes, I made ignorant, stereotypical remarks about other religions and other worldviews because I was, well, ignorant, in the literal sense -- I had never been exposed to them. It wasn’t until that I went out into the word and started my nomadic adult lifestyle (Oklahoma is state number six) that I began to see the error of my ways, that this single limited worldview that I had been raised in, the only one I had been exposed to, wasn’t necessarily the best. Yes, I even started to feel ashamed and regretful in so vehemently defending it without knowing all of the facts.

Poor Pickering was defending the only lifestyle he really knew, right or wrong. He has said his mea culpas. Cut the guy some slack. Frankly, I could really care less even if he defended some white-hooded freaks who had a thing for weenie roasts. The past is in the past; let it lie. If the French and Germans can be best buds after two centuries of hating each other’s guts, if they can bury the hatchet, why can’t we? I think it is wrong and shameful for the Dems to bring all of this old stuff up. I am not any more keen on the idea of a T-Pub in the Court of Appeals then the Dems, but, if I were in the Senate, I would be voting to confirm. The guy has been a decent judge and is not the same person he was in his youth. It’s time to move on.

Speaking of moving on, how about that Priscilla Owen? Who is Priscilla Owen? Justice Owen is a former Texas Supreme Court Justice who, like Pickering, has been renominated to the Fifth Circuit because, like Pickering, her nomination was killed by the Dems in committee. Geez, sounds rather repetitious, doesn’t it? Owen doesn’t have any white sheets in her closet; her fault is that she supposedly has written some opinions that reflect her anti-abortion convictions. Imagine that -- an opinion reflecting, well, an opinion. That is why they are called opinions. But I digress...

As a law student in a Texas law school, one has to spend a great deal of one’s life in the law library researching Texas law. (I have heard rumors that the law libraries are haunted by the spirits of law students still doing their research for Legal Writing. Although many do not acknowledge the validity of such stories, how else can one explain the phenomenon of missing law books? The law library spooked ME out, which is why I spent as little time there as I could. I don’t particularly want to meet a specter.) One of the research projects that I had to do while a law student had to do with the rights and status of the unborn, which, coincidentally, is what Roe is about. In the gazillion cases that I read from the Texas Supreme Court, I did not read any, yes not even one, that made me think, “Wow. Justice Owen is a real right-wing wacko and wants to impose her imperial will on the unsuspecting masses.” The few opinions of hers that I saw seemed to me to be reasonable and logical. Unlike a lot of legal opinions, Owen’s opinions actually made sense. I don’t know which Owen the Dems have been reading, but it isn’t the same Justice Owen whose opinions I read. Perhaps they have been reading the writings of Priscilla Owen’s evil twin, the reactionary Penny Owen. I know--maybe it was something by the controversial wordsmith Buck Owens. I had a law-and-order principal in high school named Paul Owens. Perhaps it was the ingredients of a package of Owen’s Pork Sausage, which is, after all, made from an animal, which we all know is evil. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the Dems have been reading.

Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that Owen has written some opinions that express her anti-abortion slant. So what!! Would having an anti-abortion justice be such a bad thing, anyway? The hardest thing I had to do in law school was argue that an unborn child is not a person and has no rights; in other words, in support of Roe. I am unabashedly pro-life -- I believe in neither abortion (under any circumstances) nor the death penalty. Of course, the fact that I have five kids probably gives that away. There is nothing more sacred or valuable than the human life, and a human life should never, ever be intentionally extinguished by another human being. Period. Under any circumstance.

The problem is that we have become way too clinical about things. Abortion is merely a “surgical procedure”, much like hernia surgery. Except they are not quite the same thing. Surgical procedures are supposed to save a life, not end it. Let’s call things what they are, shall we? We hear talk about “reproductive rights.” The right not to reproduce is the right not to engage in the conduct that results in reproduction. Don’t want to have children? Then don’t make the beast with two backs. An innocent child should not be killed because a woman had a “momentary lapse of reason.” Of course, the argument goes, what about cases of rape? What about them? Was the baby the perpetrator? No. Killing an innocent baby because someone else did a very bad thing is like killing me because someone else knocked off the local 7-11. Sounds like something out of one of those cheesy terrorist movies, doesn’t it? The other argument is that killing a baby is necessary in order to save the mother’s life. All I can say to that is that who are we to play God and perhaps the mother is meant to die and the child is meant to live. How dare we ever presume that the parent’s life is more important than the child’s. As a parent, I find that thought rather repugnant. Under no circumstances do I ever want to have to bury any of my children. I will gladly sacrifice my life so that they may have one. It would be rather arrogant and selfish of me to do otherwise.

Now that I have completely digressed into the abortion issue and alienated my Dem friends, I must say that I think it is completely selfish and wrong to destroy Justice Owen’s judicial career just because she is anti-abortion. The same folks who are willing to trash a good judge’s reputation are the same ones who complain that good and decent people don’t want to get involved in the political process anymore. I think it’s time for these folks to look in the mirror and perhaps they could see the root of the problem.

Believe it or not, I have, as Vanessa Williams (you remember her, the one who was trashed because as a poor youth she had a momentary lapse of reason) croons, “saved the best for last.” The administration is preparing to argue in front of the United States Supreme Court to throw out the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School. If you are a prospective law student, and you are a member of an “approved” minority, you receive bonus admission points. In other words, an inferior candidate of an approved minority will be admitted before a superior candidate not of one. Come again? If you are a marginally qualified Black or Hispanic you will be admitted before a more qualified White or Asian. It’s a quota system, no matter what you want to call it. The result, then, is that we are not getting the best of the best. This is, to most people, absolutely absurd, especially when your life is on the line, which is the case in a capital murder trial. I don’t know about you, but if I am facing the hangman’s noose, I want to have the very best attorney by my side, not a so-so one who only got there because of his or her race. If I am going to have heart surgery, I want a heart surgeon who is the best of the best of the best, regardless of gender, race, religion or anything else.

Of course, the excuse that some will give why we need affirmative action is to equalize opportunity. You know the old song and dance -- he/she grew up in a poor single parent home in the projects and didn’t have the opportunities that you did. This was the load of bull that one of the biggest racists around, Nolan Richardson, used for not giving white guys scholarships. But it is just a load of bull. We make of life what we choose to make of it. The truly great people are those who are able to overcome overwhelming odds and adversity.

The two greatest women tennis players of our time, and arguably, ever, are the Williams sisters. The Williamses learned to play on a run-down court in a run-down part of their hometown. They did not get their top rankings because of their ethnicity. No, they earned it. Sure, they didn’t have as nice of a life as other tennis players, but they strove to be the best against the overwhelming obstacles placed in their way. And they did it.

Affirmative action is demeaning to those that it is supposed to help. It says to minorities, “You are such pathetic losers that you need some extra help to succeed. Without our gratuitous handouts, you will never amount to anything; you will always be some helpless child.” Do you think winning Wimbledon would have been as sweet to the Williamses if they had automatically been placed in the championship round because of their minority status? I think not. But, this is exactly what we are doing with affirmative action.

Texas is a great example of affirmative action gone amok. I don’t know if it the result of collective guilt, but there is something terribly wrong when the government is forced to hire minority firms to do work that they are not even qualified to do in order to “equalize opportunity.” I know that I have worked under contract to do the engineering work for several minority engineering firms who were not qualified to do the work for which they were hired, which is why they had to hire me. One firm didn’t even have an engineer; they hired white subconsultants to be their engineers. Why did they get the work? Because minority hiring quotas had to be met.

There are two problems with this. First, more qualified firms are not getting the work because their owners are of the wrong race and ethnicity. Second, the decent minority firms are being robbed of work by the bad ones, and suffer from the ill-will created by the whole situation. The good apples are being thrown out with the bad.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a country that rewards those who don’t deserve to be rewarded, and punishes those that don’t deserve to be punished. But that is exactly what is happening. We punish otherwise good people because they don’t agree with our point of view or because of some mistake that was made in the past. (Ironically, both the Republicans and the Democrats are guilty of this. Was it not the Democrats who complained the loudest when the Republicans needlessly and senselessly picked apart Bill Clinton’s life? Seems like the tables are turned, aren’t they? How soon the Democrats forget how they felt.) On the other hand, we reward those who do not deserve to be rewarded because they belong to the right “group”. (Again, both parties are equally guilty. I challenge any Republican to look me straight in the eye and tell me that Shrub is the very best that the party can offer.) We must stop this madness from both sides now, or the consequences could be worse than we can possibly imagine.

By the way, better get to the window, and quickly. I don’t know the next time you will see pigs fly.

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“The Fine Print” © 2003 by Michael H. Schrader