Letters from North America 7/28/10

Monday, September 06, 2010

Opinion	September 06, 2010

7/29/2010 9:12:00 AM

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Peary Perry

Letters from North America 7/28/10

By Peary Perry

Perhaps I'm just getting too old and set in my ways, but each day that passes brings new events which just set my teeth on edge.

I cannot begin to describe how depressing some of these things are to me. Perhaps I'm wrong for feeling the way that I do, but it sure seems the world is spinning out of control.

This weekend, I recorded a movie called "Public Enemies," which was about John Dillinger. Now, you may have liked it, but I sat through about half of it and then deleted it, since I felt it was a piece of garbage. I guess I was expecting something along the lines of a documentary, not a puff piece making Dillinger out to be some kind of benevolent citizen. He was anything but. Dillinger was a thug and a killer. Not someone I'd like to be friends with.

I tend not to want to watch programs that glorify criminals and their lifestyles. First off, I think they serve no useful purpose, and secondly, I think they tend to be a bad influence on the youth of this country. If you are a teenager and you see programs or movies that make drug use, bank robbery and murder out to be a glamorous way of life, then why study to be something useful in our society? Why, according to these depictions, you can make more money in a week than others can in a year. Of course, they don't show you the downside of this kind of life, do they? Not in Hollywood Land. Wouldn't make any money.

You might ask yourself, what in the world got his BB so high this morning? I'll tell you. There is a piece in the paper about the so-called "Barefoot Bandit." This is the name given to a 19-year-old kid named Colton Harris-Moore. Moore has been on the loose for nearly two years, and is thought to have committed a number of burglaries over a wide part of the country. He was arrested in the Bahamas after he was thought to have crash-landed an airplane that had been stolen in Indiana.

So, you think this kid is a lot of trouble? Think again.

His mother has hired a well-known entertainment attorney to field all of the calls she is getting for a book and movie deal based on her son's escapades. Apparently, there isn't any law that prohibits her and her son from getting rich if these were to materialize.

But here comes the good part.

The mom has met with the U.S attorney's office and is discussing a deal to turn over any profits from the book and movie deal in exchange for freedom for her son. The U.S. attorney's office said they could use the money to pay off any of Moore's victims.

What a deal.

So let me see if I get this right - you break into houses, steal an airplane, crash it on some island and hide from the authorities for nearly two years, and folks are falling all over themselves to put you in print and on the big screen? Is this crazy or what?

I suppose if I went out and found me a bunch of old guys and started robbing banks and whatever, we'd eventually become some sort of folk heroes and be able to swap stories of our adventures for a multi-movie and book deal, just so long as we turned over the money to the authorities. As they said in the above statements, they could use the revenue.

I don't know about you, but the thought of this actually taking place turns my stomach and makes me ashamed of our judicial system. A lack of tax revenue is no excuse to allow criminals to run rampant over our society and make victims out of our neighbors in exchange for money for entertainment purposes. It just isn't right.

I'm not exactly certain how many other countries there are in this world of ours, but there must be some place where sanity is still being used in a civilized society. Let me know if you can think of some place, because it is shaping up not to be in this country, isn't it?

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