"Houston, We Definitely Have a Problem"

Whitney Houston died last weekend. Found submerged in her hotel room bathtub; she was not able to be revived and was pronounced DOA. Of course they performed an autopsy and the results of that autopsy along with toxicology results will be forthcoming in a week or two. However, it doesn’t take Thomas Noguichi (former famous chief coroner of LA) to pretty much tell us what happened. Addicted to prescription pain killers, sleep medicines and God knows what else she simply gave out or overdosed. The old saying “it’s not the years, it’s the mileage is so often true. If that saying is true Houston had a ton of mileage on her at age 48. It is not my intent here to criticize Whitney Houston a woman whose talent for singing (her National Anthem at Super Bowl XXI is regarded as the best one ever) was sadly matched by her ability at self-abuse. I write today to discuss the drug addicted America we have become.

Elvis, Judy Garland, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Michael Jackson, River Phoenix, Kirk Cobain, Heath Ledger…how many names do you need me to list of celebrities that killed themselves either all at once (Jimi Hendrix) or slowly over time (Elvis Presley). Whether they did it all at once or slowly the fact is they killed themselves. How many more celebrities have come close, Mackenzie Phillips, Robert Downey Jr., Charlie Sheen and countless others that but for the Grace of God would have joined their brethren in the drug wing of Purgatory. Let’s not forget those currently working on an early demise like Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Spears, and Demi Moore. Lord knows they've made a valiant efforts to achieve the early departure (from this world) they seem determined to get.

I haven’t even begun to list the sports stars, the art world, fashion world, literary world and political arena. For some, food was the addiction (John Candy), for others the hard stuff like heroin (Judy Garland) and for others the inability to get off drugs led them to desperate acts like Kurt Cobain or Bryn Hartman killing her celebrity husband Phil in a drugged state. IN the last few years the abuse has really gone the way of prescription drugs. Principally they use downers in the form of “sleeping medication”, or prescription drugs associated with trying to relax. Often it’s the bad drug interactions like in the case of Elvis (42 different drugs in his system at the time of death) or Heath Ledger (many different drugs in his system combined with alcohol). Hard stuff, slow stuff, street stuff, or prescription stuff it’s all lethal whether in the long term, or by way of the single overdose.

Now, imagine this, for every celebrity with this problem how many more Americans have the same kind of drug issues? Millions by most accounts. We are the most drug addicted major country in the world. Close to 62% of all the prescribed drug usage in the world is right here in the US. There is a drug store on almost every street corner in America and there seems to be no end to the number of doctors ready to write out fill orders at the drop of a hat (especially if you have lots of money). I once bet my ex that I could go into any doctor’s office and get the doctor to write out a prescription for amoxicillin ((antibiotics for a child) without even bringing in a kid with me. Just show them my wallet and have a good story. She wouldn’t let me try but I felt certain I could do it.

My final point is this: Doctors have to be held accountable for writing prescriptions unnecessarily. The Doctor’s for hire have to go to jail and lose licenses and any drug addict that uses up tax payer money getting medical help for overdoses (they just show up at the hospital and collapse on the floor) must be required to pay the money back or go to jail and clean up. I know, I know, there are anomalies like Keith Richard but believe me he is one in a million, and probably a zombie at that.

Look, everyone can do what they want but it is almost certain that if you start down that alcohol, cigarette, illegal or prescription drug highway it’s going to be a short road, an ugly road and you are not going to like what happens to you one bit. We have to get young people to understand that. Don't even even start down that hiway.

As George Orwell said so well, “at age 50, everyone has the face they deserve”. In the case of Whitney Houston it was age 48 but for her, nonetheless, still true.

"Five that Few Can Stand!!"

Not everyone even cares about athletes. But for those that follow sports and know some of the pro players out there; I have come up with my list of the five athletes that their peers hate. These are guys other guys in the locker room wish would drop dead. They are NOT listed in any specific order.

1. “O” dog or Orlando Hudson, second base for the San Diego Padres. He has been in the majors 8 years and is with his 6th team. That alone is not a good sign and the Padres would love to move him and his 2 million dollar salary but there aren’t any takers. He is a career .278 hitter (only okay) and a pretty good fielder so what’s the problem? Well, he is self-centered and a show boater. For example, last year he muffed a ground ball and it rolled about 15 feet away from him but instead of getting right up to go after it, he just lay there (not hurt) and a runner scored from first base. The same thing happened with a pop up. He openly accuses baseball of being racist and in short he runs his mouth too much for a player long on flash but short on real effort. Players don’t like him.

2. Vicente Padilla, pitcher for Boston. This guy is as mean as a rattlesnake and only plays when he wants to. He led the American League in hit batters in 2009 while with the Rangers and started a bench-clearing brawl against the Angels and A’s by repeatedly hitting batters. When the Rangers released him (2009)they officially said, "he was a disruptive influence in the clubhouse”. Others have used the word toxic. He only started 16 games for the Dodgers in 2010 and 9 games last year. Injured or dogging it? He won’t take showers either and the players hate him.

3. Sean Avery, forward in the National Hockey League. Currently playing minor league hockey after being put on waivers by the New York Rangers in December 2011. Notorious bad boy that takes cheap shots against players, like when he whacked the goalie on the back of the head while skating by (huge no,no in this league) and he runs his mouth. He’s the guy that said Dion Phanuef (a teammate at the time) was having his sloppy seconds because he was dating Sean’s ex-girlfriend. He’s made many racial slurs calling black players black monkeys and has been fined so many times the league lost count. He is the most interesting of the bad boy’s because he works for charities, recorded a video supporting same sex marriages and interned last summer at Vogue magazine. He has talent but is one hostile guy and in an anonymous poll 64% of the players voted him the least liked player.

4. Kobe Bryant, guard for the Los Angeles Lakers. What the payers don’t like is he has to be the show. He ran Shaq out of town because the spotlight was only big enough for one, him. He not only cheated on his wife (assaulted a hotel maid, paid her money to drop charges and essentially got away with it) but even after he bought his wife a huge ring and she took him back, he supposedly wouldn’t stop and now she is divorcing him. On the court he scores a ton and has personally won many games on last second shots. No one denies he is a sure-fire Hall of Fame player but he also loses games by taking impossible shots instead of passing the ball to teammates. Recently after another melt down in which he shot poorly and the team lost, while Kobe was yukking it up in the clubhouse, the Lakers big center Andrew Bynum shouted (in Kobe’s direction) “another fucking loss”. Not one other player came to Kobe’s defense. When Kobe leaves the game there won’t be any weeping players.

5. Alex Rodriguez, third base for the Yankees. Alex is despised by his own teammates as well as many others in baseball. Notice when he hits a homerun (occurring less frequently now that players are tested for steroids) how few players shake his hand and those that do often look down or the other way. Why he is not liked? Partly, it’s jealousy in that he was the first baseball player to get a mega-millions contract in the 250 million + range, years ago with Texas. He dates starlets and models. But it’s not just the money, for years he has had a reputation as a player that wouldn’t play hurt, wouldn’t dive for balls, and wouldn’t risk injury by running into a catcher. Then there is his aloofness, he doesn’t care about teammates, stays to himself and has never been one of the guys. The perception is that instead of bonding with teammates, he’s self-promoting, making Alex a corporation. In other words to him you are so and so just a player but he’s “Alex”.
Like Barry Bonds before him, when he leaves few players will care.

I could have listed many more like: Terrell Owens, Milton Bradley, Ndamukong Suh, Plaxico Burress, Zdeno Chara, Alex Ovetchkin, Serena Williams, Layton Hewitt, Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch.

I didn’t even get into the players fans hate.
For example: fans hate Kris Humphries, forward of the New Jersey Nets (NBA) for divorcing Kim Kardashian after 72 days of marriage. He’s booed everywhere, but I think he deserves a Purple Heart for surviving his own version of a 72 day Bataan Death March.

"The Costliest Sin"

Edmund Spenser, a British poet from the last half of the 16th Century, wrote his famous epic poem “The Faerie Queen” in the 1590’s. The first half was completed in 1590 and the last half in 1596. It was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. In this poem he refers to the seven deadly sins of man. Spenser suggested in his poem that Pride was the worst of the deadly sins. He looked at the fallen angel’s rebellion against God, and the audacity of Satan to want to usurp God as examples. You've heard the expression “Pride goeth before the fall”. History is complete with characters that allowed pride (and its second cousin arrogance) to be their undoing. Richard Nixon comes to mind, perhaps Douglas MacArthur in the Korean conflict, A.J. Smith. No doubt about it, false pride, and pride in excess can bring a person down. Also on Spenser’s list of seven sins was avarice (greed). It was not his number one sin at the time, but if Spenser were writing his epic today he would likely have put greed at the top of the sin list. Avarice is the root of much evil in today's world.

Consider: a few years ago (in California) energy companies successfully lobbied for the deregulation of their own industry. The local energy company (SDG&E) immediately raised bills through the roof. People saw their bills triple or quadruple in a month. Typical 80.00 monthly charges became 240.00 overnight. A huge outcry went up; other counties experienced the same scenario. It took about 5 months for the Governor to undo the immediate and severe gouging by these energy companies. Eventually, regulation went back into effect. Since that time bills have been in the ball park of fair. Why did SDG & E cook their own goose by immediately gouging people? Simple answer is “because they could”. The common welfare was thrown out the window for huge profits. I mean before the aborted deregulation and then subsequent to its restoration SDG&E never once went into default or declared they didn't make enough money. They just had the chance to gouge people and they did it, immediately and without blinking an eye.

Consider: Gasoline is 3.29 a gallon in Nebraska and at the same time it is 3.99 in California. Why? The answer is simple: because they can charge Californians 3.99. Oil companies know Californians need to drive, they must drive and so they can charge whatever they want. What about the common good? What about the common welfare? All out the window. They would charge 20.00 a gallon if they thought they could get away with it. What if in the city of New York it was decided a Metro Card would cost 300.00 a month, what would people do except riot, burn the subway or just find a way to pay it. The point is when companies have you by the short ones, they squeeze, they take advantage. Doing what is right and fair never enters the discussion.

Consider: Goldman-Sachs (in the 2000’s) ran up debts and highest level executives paid each other stratospheric bonuses because they knew they could. They knew the people (tax payers) needed them more than they needed the taxpayers. Clearly! Apparently they were right because the Government (tax payers) forgave them their bad business, their greed and gave them money to stay in business. Do you think the big boys at Goldman-Sachs ever really sweated that much? Did they really worry that they would be allowed to go under? In any event, for the top 10% of the executives it didn't matter because they had already paid themselves before the collapse, they could walk away. Forget Jenny the receptionist, she’s on her own.


Consider: The free enterprise system has always been about profit and making money. But it used to be self-governed by an unwritten creed not to gouge the customer, that the business needed the customer as much as the customer needed the business. Not anymore, screw the customer and the more leverage I have over them (the more they need me versus me needing them) the more I can gouge. Honor went out the window some decades back and it hasn't been allowed to come back nor have the people demanded it come back.

Consider: Is it possible that Republicans would actually block efforts at improving the economy because they believe a failed economy is their best chance at winning back the White House? I know it’s been brought up more than once that they would sacrifice the American people to keep the bad economy going. I believe some (I hope not many) Republicans think that way, and they would justify it as being in the long-term interest of the country. But lest you think I am all over the Republicans, I believe the democrats would likely do the same thing. Is winning that big a deal? Is it?

Consider: Name the last President (including the sitting one) that left office anywhere close to what they had (money) when they came in? Name any congressman, that doesn't use their position to leverage monetary income in all sorts of ways. All the Presidential hopefuls are politicians that are fully awash in personal cash.

OF COURSE winning is everything. To the victors go the spoils and in the last 40 years the spoils have mounted up substantially. We took a left turn in this country somewhere in the last 35 years and common welfare became the red-headed stepchild in the back bedroom. Money became the end all/be all. Serving the people, self-sacrifice, and the common welfare (doing what would be morally right) all were sacrificed to the God of Money.

Gordon Gecko, in the movie Wall Street summed up the last 35 years with his mantra “Greed is good”. In the sequel (2010) he once again uses people, stealing money, lying, manipulating, leveraging, to get a billion dollars because “Greed is still good”. The movie-makers did try to soften his greed by having him give away 10% of his ill-gotten gains to an energy company. In fact, that was the stupidest part of the movie. It was out of character for him to give a shit about anybody except himself. OH yeah that’s right,the reason he gave the money because it was a big issue with his daughter’s boyfriend and he wanted to win her back. (10% was the right amount because we are left believing they will be just fine) So in fact he buys her love back for 10% of his obscene wealth.
Are we supposed to think that is a good thing?

Many ham and egg Americans have also fed at the money trough. Ordinary people in California were rolling their home purchases over (in some cases yearly) to reap obscene amounts of money. Making 60K a year but wearing Rolex’s and driving Lexus cars to create the illusion of being rich. Most people knew it was weird and didn't seem right but what the hell there was money to be made. The only difference between the average greedy Joe's out there and the Gordon Gecko's is scale. There are people to be sure that can say they never compromised their values. There are people that could have gouged customers and did not. There are morally principled people in every county in this country. Unfortunately, none are running for high office.

Spenser made it clear in his long, poem that there are sins that mostly harm the individual: gluttony, envy and laziness for example. He also said there are sins that harm not only us but others: pride, wrath, and lechery fit that mold.
But there is one sin that demands the highest price. It's the most costliest of the sins : greed. It hurts many others and for long periods of time. Greed is the kind of sin that eats away the lining of your soul and blights the people around you. We all need to be mindful about this and demand our leaders be mindful of it as well.