Eight Feet Deep

Is Paris Hilton’s legal goings-on legitimate news? We ask, you decide.==Photo by Peter Schäfermeier of Universal Photo.

An interesting debate took place this morning on CNN’s Reliable Sources. The show’s host, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, and a panel of journalists discussed the newsworthiness of the current legal saga engulfing socialite, TV star and celebrity ding-a-ling Paris Hilton.

In March, Hilton was sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating her probation stemming from a DUI arrest in 2006. Whether she actually goes to jail in June remains to be seen.

I must confess that I cannot remember a whole lot about the discussion on Howie’s show this morning as I was doing something and only got bits and pieces of the discourse. But it is an interesting debate. The majority of Americans who are sentenced for probation violations on drunk driving charges are hardly mentioned by the media unless they are celebrities, government officials, or have run over someone or something significant.

At a paper where I once worked, I remember that a local morning show TV anchor was arrested by police after she was stopped for speeding and allegedly assaulted the officer. The assault was trivial as I remember. I believe she had jerked the ticket book from the officer’s hand and may have caused him to bang his hand on the door but causing no real injury. I could be wrong about the details.

Since many of the reporters at that paper looked contemptuously at local TV news types, there seemed to be some joy expressed in the newsroom regarding the incident. The charges were dropped, but the police beat reporter kept the anchor’s angry mugshot on his cubicle wall. The reason her photo sported an angry look is that the anchor was running late for her job at whatever ungodly hour she had to get there for the morning gig, (the reason she was speeding) not to mention getting arrested. The charges were later dropped, so she got quite a lot of negative publicity and was never found guilty.

Although I was not a big fan of the television personality who was taken to jail, I did wonder just how fair the newspaper was being. Would our photos have appeared in the paper for similar arrests? I guess it would depend on who was arrested, their position and whether or not he or she was liked by the editors. My mugshot might have run. I’ll just leave it at that because I remain under a confidentiality agreement with that paper. I do remember that a young woman who worked on the copy desk was arrested on the job after she was spotted by a security guard in the paper’s smoking area inhaling weed. She was fired but the incident did not make the news at our paper.

The fact is that whether a person’s name or picture appears in the news for some legal infraction short of violent crime is rather arbitrary among newspapers and the electronic media. The same goes for suicides. Most newspapers don’t report suicides unless it is someone well-known or the death occurs in a public place. Most local news outlets do report, sometimes with an obituary and other times with stories, when one of their own dies either violently or from natural causes. Depending on the paper and how large it is, these obits might be written for anyone whether they were a janitor, pressman or editor.

But celebrities of all ilk seem to be fair game for any infraction be it legal or of a personal nature. Some sports figures seem to get into legal messes so often these days that sports desks at newspapers should think about hiring their own police beat reporter just to cover the arrests.

Of course, the news executives defend their practices related to news about celebrities. It’s what the public wants. The public is consumed with celebrity. I have seen TV news people from even the smallest of markets asked for their autograph. I don’t think anyone ever asked for my autograph during the 17 years I worked for newspapers. That is even though I, at one time, wrote a column that was distributed nationally. I must admit that I would have felt silly signing an autograph. The fact that I was never asked seems just about the way the matter should have been.

News types like to wail, gnash their teeth and wring their hands over even the most minuscule issues that affect them. So the debate over reporting of celebrity hijinks is largely an internal gabfest. It is an interesting topic. But it isn’t among the biggest struggle that society faces these days. So, I wonder: Why did I just devote 30 minutes and all these paragraphs and words devoted to this issue? It beats me. I suppose that I just need a life.

Meet Bush’s yorkie, VA Secretary Jim Nicholson.

If I had a dog, I would shave its ass and call it the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Well, that’s not entirely true. I would never shave a dog’s ass.

In all of the dealings I have had with the VA since leaving the Navy almost 29 years ago, those I experienced this week have been the most infuriating, frustrating and probably a few other -tings yet to be named for a future draft choice.

My latest troubles with the VA stem from a combination of my employment as a part-time government employee, the VA’s unwillingness to share information with those who use its healthcare system and a little negligence on my part.

Health problems — degenerative arthritis of the cervical spine to be exact — contributed to my severe poverty level over the past year and a half. That led to homelessness, which continues although I have been staying in a motel until I can find an affordable place to live. I was hoping to use some reimbursements from my part-time job to snag an apartment or other dwelling this week. But the good-old ass-dog VA had other ideas.

My poverty and the VA’s negligence contributed to my having outstanding medical bills at three different VA systems in Central Texas, North Texas and Houston. A veteran who receives VA care must complete what is known as a means test to determine if he or she is able or unable to pay for their care or prescription copayments. The VA had always reminded patients each year to do that but somewhere along the line, that practice stopped and the veteran was responsible for getting that paperwork done. The problem is, and even as much as I was plugged into the VA in the past, I didn’t know that the onus fell on me.

Consequently, I owed for medical treatment and copayments that should not have been charged to me because I was below their poverty level.

Also, after more than 10 years of VA care I only learned this week that “Previous Balance” on my monthly statement is actually a delinquent amount. I was not a very happy person discovering these revelations.

My negligence stemmed from trying to survive and doing all the various necessities when one is homeless. This includes finding food, shelter and a place to wash away the funk. I was not as attentive to VA bills in the last year or so because I was trying to survive and it had never been a major issue being behind on your VA bills.

That all changed when I began working for the government in March.

I knew that some money could possibly be garnished from my pay for money I owed to the VA. But I did not know the depth of how that all worked.

It worked by taking all but about 1 percent of the money that was owed me for travel and per diem reimbursements. All of a sudden, bam, they took all my money without telling me squat with the exception of a notice that $80 would be garnished for my debt with the Central Texas VA system. And they will continue to take my money until or if I can get in place a waiver to stop these vultures from raiding my treasury.

The biggest problem I have with all of this — aside from my badly-needed funds being looted — is that these actions are taken with no consideration whatsoever of the individual’s financial circumstances. The VA as I am sure is the case with some other agencies has this mindset: “He’s a government employee. We can treat him however we want because WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT!” Tee hee.

Now I have never been accused of viewing life as particularly fair. But these circumstances go beyond basic fairness. The VA — led by former Republican National Committee chairman and whom to me resembles a Yorkshire Terrier Jim Nicholson — should above all treat its patients with some semblance of decency. The VA has a lot of wonderful people but also has its share of snakes. And these snakes don’t give a rat’s ass if you are homeless or blind, crippled or crazy. They want to make access to veterans health care difficult with the hope that the veteran will just give up and go away, and in some cases — die.

Mine is a cautionary tale. If you are a VA patient you should watch them like a hawk. Read all the fine print. Think ahead of them and keep in mind all the ways that the VA could screw you. I know that is hard to do if you are homeless, or you have a severe or life-threatening illness or you are struggling with physical therapy with your prosthetic leg that you now wear from fighting that f**ked up war in Iraq.

As for me, I will not give up my fight to seek a little fairness and to perhaps get a little of my money back. I don’t know what it will take. I have already filed a complaint with the office of my local congressman, U.S. Rep. Ted “Here Comes the Judge” Poe. I don’t expect a lot out of this move but it will at the very least make a few people at the VA a bit anxious. And in addition to studying my legal options, I likewise am thinking about taking my story to a few of my old media contacts. I would rather not do the latter, but the only way to get things done at the VA is to shame them into action.

It’s a sad state of affairs how our veterans are treated in this country. The VA talks the talk but rarely do they walk the walk. The agency often doles out what I consider as emotional abuse and sometimes harm the patients they are charged with healing. Physician, heal thy self. Please.

Right now I am going through the mother of all hassels with the Department of Veterans Affairs. I am much too angry to write anything about it and am weighing my options as to whether I should contact some of my media friends to tell them about how I am getting major-league screwed by the VA. Therefore, I hardly can bring myself to write anything with in which the VA is mentioned.

But I did find this rather interesting tidbit from “Al’s Morning Meeting,” an e-mailed blog for journalists from the Poynter Institute. Talk about going above and beyond the call of duty!

Despite the tall electric transmission towers the countryside view of Newton County, Texas, is quite nice.

The place where I was raised has its drawbacks such as it being home to some hard core rednecks and being one of the poorest counties in the country.

But if you are fortunate enough to live or have lived in Newton County, at the most eastern extremity of Texas, you will be surrounded by some of the greatest scenery that the East Texas Pineywoods has to offer.

So the question I must raise after having visited my old hometown last weekend is this: Why in the hell — in this day in age — are people still dumping their s**t in that beautiful countryside?

Just down the road from the highline view is all this trash. Isn’t it lovely?

Texas has had for quite a few years one of the most successful advertising campaigns ever called “Don’t Mess With Texas.” More than just advertisements on TV and radio by some of Texas’ most revered luminaries such as Willie Nelson and the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, the campaign has helped educate and raise awareness of what price littering brings. For instance:

“It cost approximately $32 million to clean up roadside litter in Texas last year. Ninety percent of this cost is paid for with tax dollars.”

That should be enough to get anyone’s attention even if you aren’t some bleeding-heart, Owl Gore-loving, environmentalist.

Still people litter. And that is the key to this particular type of backwoods dumping, I believe, that they still litter.

Various studies cite reasons why people litter including the lack of available solid waste disposal facilities (a.k.a. junk piles). But having grown up in East Texas, I know that even with available junk piles people have always used the beautiful, isolated countryside for their private dumps. It’s a cultural thing and many of those who continue to dump will not change their ways unless they are dragged kicking, screaming and shooting their shotguns into the awareness that “littering bad, not littering, good.”

Many places, around Texas, at least, have received grants for funding cops who do nothing but hunt down those who dump their mess in places they shouldn’t. I hate to see garbage cops added to the list of those institutions in which law enforcement is needed to intervene but it seems there is little choice.

I’m not picking on my old hometown but am using it as an example. It is inexcusable to create and perpetuate illegal dumps like those above. People need to quit screwing with the ever-shrinking countryside and take a little extra time to dump where they should be dumping. Otherwise, they should pay a hefty fine and perhaps be sentenced to community service cleaning up such places.

Okay, enough of my high horse. I better go before I get altitude sickness.

The famous sergeants Jasper and Newton rescue American prisoners from British capture in this painting by John Blake White.

A long line appears to be forming for morning breakfast here at the McDonald’s in Jasper, Texas. I am in Jasper — where I was born more than 51 years ago — and specifically in McDonald’s because they have a wi-fi connection. I was unsure if the town where I am staying for the weekend with one of my brothers, Newton, has wi-fi.

Even though I was born here, I never spent an inordinate amount of time in Jasper while growing up 15 miles east in Newton. Oh, I went to dances at the youth center, hung out every now and then at Top Burger and would go most years to the Jasper Lions Club Rodeo (That was where I first saw a much more neatly-trimmed, tie-wearing and cowboy-hatted Willie Nelson more than 40 years ago — before he was “Willie”).

In later years I only passed through Jasper, something which some of my friends of darker skin colors have avoided judiciously. That is with at least one exception, my friend, Joyce King, who wrote a book about the horrific dragging death here of James Byrd Jr. by three worthless crackers. Joyce actually fell in love with the place, which is easy to do, as well as with its people (something that might not be all that easy for some folks.)

But as Joyce has pointed out time and again in her books, the town didn’t murder James Byrd Jr., three racist, violent, low-lifes did.

This area of Texas is beautiful. I have lived the majority of my life in one area of East Texas for most of my life. Driving on Hwy. 190 this morning, I breathed in the exceptional vista afforded one during spring in these parts.

Such great natural beauty and a sociological discussion of the area’s folks could take up pages and pages, but that would leave out the point I was going to make as exemplified by the title and above picture.

A number of places — both cities and counties — across the U.S. are named Newton and Jasper. In some instances, these towns or counties are located adjacent to one another as is the case of Newton and Jasper in Texas. Both counties share the name as well as both county seats.

Being a student of local history, because my momma was a student of local history, I only had a vague idea of just who were namesakes of these counties and cities? The description given for these gents was generally that Sgts. William Jasper and John Newton were heroes of the American Revolution. In some cases, Newton would be a corporal, thus what is probably the reason a general inferiority complex that is prevalent in Newton County. That and it being one of the most impoverished counties in the country.

Beyond that these two gents were heroes, little else illuminated what it was they did which was so full of valor that some 20 counties and towns across the country are named for these guys. They were reputed to be under the command of Gen. Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion. And that was about the jist of what it was I knew about Sgt. Jasper and Sgt. (or Cpl.) Newton.

A little information on Newton and Jasper the soldiers is available via Wikipedia, but one must always be wary of using that as a primary source of information:

“Although he appears today to have been unimportant, place names across the United States attest to his renown in the early 19th Century, one of the popular fictionalized heroic enlisted men of the Revolution, as if there were not enough actual heroes to honor.

“Parson Weems’s fictional Sgt. Newton saved a group of American prisoners from execution by capturing their British guards at the Siege of Savannah in 1779, in which the Americans recaptured Savannah, Georgia. According to Lieutenant Colonel Peter Horry however, “Newton was a Thief & a Villain.”

“Sgt. Newton’s story is similar to that of Sgt. William Jasper.”

In the end, I suppose it doesn’t matter what Newton and Jasper did or didn’t do. They apparently were well-known enough that people named places after them. Who knows if in the future new American cities will be named after modern day heroes, or their replacement in our society for heroes, celebrities.

A Paris Hilton, Ark? I don’t think so.