Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/426611
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS It'samazingthattheshowalmostwasnot broadcast. I speak of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" — a show that, for reasons I don't understand, holds more power over me with every passing year. Theshowhasaverysimple premise: Too much commercial- ization can take the meaning out of Christmas. As it goes, Charlie Brown is depressed be- cause every- one around him fails to see the true meaning of Christmas. Lucy com- plains, for in- stance, that she doesn't want stupid toys or a bicycle or clothes for Christmas. She wants real estate! To resolve his depression, Charlie Brown throws himself into his work as the director of the Christmas play. But that soon falls apart, too. Distraught, he follows a light in the east and finds his way to a Christmas tree lot. The only tree he can find is a small sickly one. When he brings it back, the others mock him. But then Linus comes to the rescue. At once innocent and wise beyond his years, Linus tells Charlie Brown he knows what the real meaning of Christmas is. He tells the story of Christ's birth by quoting the Gospel of Luke in the King James version of the Bible. "And, suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, and goodwill toward men,'" says Linus. "And that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown." Suddenly, the other charac- ters are transformed. They be- come compassionate and con- cerned. They decorate the sickly tree and transform it into a thing of beauty. They wish Charlie Brown a Merry Christmas and sing him a Christmas carol. The things I like most about the show — the simple, almost primitive animation style, the use of real children's voices, the lack of a laugh track and the smooth-jazz soundtrack — were the very things network executives despised. According to USA Today, when CBS executives pre- viewed the show, they hated that it was so unlike anything else on the tube. They said it moved too slow. They thought viewers would hate the swing- ing score by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi. And they certainly disliked like the idea of Linus reading from the Bible. "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz refused to make a sin- gle change to his show — and since it had been made un- der such a tight deadline, there was no time for network brass to replace it with something else. They had no choice but to air it. And boy, was it a hit. When the show was first broadcast on Dec. 9, 1965, nearly half of the television sets in America were tuned in to watch. The show has continued to receive good ratings ever since. And now we need to em- brace the simple message of the show more than ever before. Every year, the Christmas advertisements begin earlier. The stores open earlier and stay open longer. The stock market rises or falls based on how much holiday stuff con- sumers buy. The older I get, the less in- terested I am in stuff and the more interested I am in the health and well-being of my loved ones. Rather than spend money on things none of us re- ally need, why not give it to charity or a needy family in- stead? I know it is somewhat ironic that a television show, whose advertising has sold a lot of consumer goods, would be noted for its anti-commercial message, but it is — because Charles Schulz was a genius. Which is why I have big plans when "A Charlie Brown Christ- mas" airs every year. I flip off the lights as I watch it — just as millions of kids have done every year since 1965. TomPurcell,authorof"Misad- ventures of a 1970s Childhood" and "Comical Sense: A Lone Hu- morist Takes on a World Gone Nutty!" is a Pittsburgh Tribune- Review humor columnist. Send comments to Tom at Purcell@ caglecartoons.com. Tom Purcell Charlie Brown Christmas miracle They thought viewers would hate the swinging score by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi. And they certainly disliked like the idea of Linus reading from the Bible. Cartoonist's take By Ron Paul It seems nobody wants to be Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration. The president's first two Defense Secretaries, Rob- ert Gates and Leon Panetta, both complained bitterly this month about their time in the administra- tion. The president's National Se- curity Council staff micro-man- aged the Pentagon, they said at a forum last week. Former Secretary Gates re- vealed that while he was run- ning the Defense Department, the White House established a line of communication to the Joint Spe- cial Operations Command to dis- cuss matters of strategy and tac- tics, cutting the Defense Secretary out of the loop. His successor at the Pentagon, Leon Panetta, made similar complaints. Last week President Obama's third Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, was forced out of office af- ter complaining in October that the administration had no coher- ent policy toward Syria. He did have a point: while claiming recent US bombing in Syria is designed to degrade and destroy ISIS, many in the administration con- tinue pushing for "regime change" against Syrian president Assad — who is also fighting ISIS. Chair- man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, has spoken out in favor of further US escala- tion in Syria and Iraq despite Pres- ident Obama's promise of "no com- bat troops" back to the region. Shortly after Chuck Hagel's ouster, the media reported that the president favored Michelle Flournoy to replace him. She would have been the first female defense secretary, but more tell- ingly she would come to the posi- tion from a think tank almost en- tirely funded by the military in- dustrial complex. The Center for a New Ameri- can Security, which she founded in 2007, is the flagship of the neo- con wing of the Democratic Party. The Center has argued against US troops ever leaving Iraq and has endorsed the Bush adminis- tration's doctrine of preventative warfare. The Center is perhaps best known for pushing the failed counterinsurgency (COIN) doc- trine in Iraq and Afghanistan. The COIN doctrine was said at the time to have been the key to the US victory in Iraq and Afghan- istan. Now that the US is back in Iraq and will continue combat op- erations in Afghanistan next year, you don't hear too much about COIN and victories. Flournoy turned down Obama before she was even asked, how- ever. She is said to be waiting for a Hillary Clinton presidency, where her militarism may be even more appreciated. With the next Senate to be led by neocons like John Mc- Cain, a Hillary Clinton presidency would find little resistance to a more militaristic foreign policy. So President Obama cannot keep defense secretaries on the job and his top Pentagon pick is not interested in serving the last stretch of a lame duck administra- tion. There is bickering and fight- ing within the administration about who should be running the latest US wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. Here is one thing none of them are fighting about: the US policy of global intervention. All sides agree that the US needs to ex- pand its war in the Middle East, that the US must continue to provoke Russia via Ukraine, and that regime change operations must continue worldwide. There is no real foreign policy debate in Washington. But the real na- tional security crisis will come when their militarism finally cripples our economy and places us at the mercy of the rest of the world. Ron Paul is a former Congress- man and Presidential candidate. He can be reached at VoicesofLib- erty.com. Ron Paul Who wants to be the next US Defense Secretary? Another view By Tina Dupuy The officer shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri last Au- gust has rallied Americans to their camps: The pro-Of- ficer Darren Wilson vs. pro-un- armed black teenager. In the wake of the grand ju- ry's decision not to indict the officer, each side is now dig- ging in their heels. It's per- sonal, it's visceral and now it appears to be personality driven. As I've written about be- fore Americans have gotten really good at punishing cas- ual racism (i.e. notables drop- ping the N-word and losing their social standing) but are often blind or even unwill- ing to accept the idea of insti- tutionalized racism. The best example is Los Angeles Clip- pers owner Donald Sterling, who was ostracized for telling his mistress not to be photo- graphed with black people, but back when the Justice Depart- ment fined him for refusing to rent to African Americans in Beverly Hills, he was still held in esteem and able to own a basketball team. Saying rac- ists things? Outrageous. Doing racists things? Bupkis. Ferguson is two-thirds black and its government is 94 per- cent white, plus the town re- lies on court fees to provide a quarter of their operating budget. In practice this pol- icy means a nearly all-white police force is incentivized to ticket the majority black pop- ulation. This is a common practice now so municipali- ties don't have to raise taxes; they can just monetize misde- meanors. It means poor people are a revenue source for those trusted to protect and serve. It's a recipe for resentment. This harassment by police cou- pled with lack of representa- tion is understandably infuri- ating. That along with 14 other "officer-involved fatal shoot- ings" by St. Louis area cops in the last decade only adds to the fire. There's a tendency among those unwilling to accept the idea of institutionalized racism to err on the side of the law and believe police wouldn't be stop- ping and arresting black peo- ple if they weren't committing crimes. When you're in hand- cuffs everyone looks guilty. It's dismissed as a simple equa- tion: You're in trouble with the law because you broke the law. There's a bias against being in- nocent before proven guilty when one looks guilty. They have to support (and at times blindly) the officer because he's now is a symbol of Law and Or- der. Wilson is their false idol of the system working. Then there are the Brown supporters, who claim Wilson didn't see him as a person, yet they also view him as a com- pilation, a representation of a collective experience of black men in America where one in three will go to prison in their lifetime. Where, according to ProPublica, they are 21 times more likely to be killed by po- lice than their white counter- parts. In trying to get away from victim blaming they've gone to the other extreme of victim canonizing. To them, Brown is a symbol of the sys- tem being rigged, biased and corrupt. That's who was lying dead on the street for hours on that bright August day: Human dignity, fairness and equality in the eyes of the law. None of this deifying will fix the systematic failures un- covered by Michael Brown's violent end. The debate is re- duced to if Wilson is a lying Klansman or if Brown was a violent thug. Both miss the point. There's a federal investiga- tion into alleged civil rights vi- olations in Ferguson. If it'll re- solve the rage remains to be seen. One problem is the law. In 1989, the Supreme Court— during the height of the crack epidemic—set the standard of "objectively reasonable" when it comes to use of force. Po- lice officers have what appears to be carte blanche due to the demands of their work. It was hard to get an indictment of Wilson because the law basi- cally says if you have a badge and a reasonable fear—you're not criminally liable. Most of these shootings are dismissed by internal investigations and on some level that has to be going through the minds of of- ficers: They have immunity. If Wilson didn't, would he have just let Brown walk home? The other is police with mil- itarized weapons sans mili- tary purposes. When the pro- tests first started in the sum- mer, the whole nation gasped as a small town of 21,000 res- idents was occupied by a well- stocked militia. We've entrusted our po- lice departments with far too much firepower and made them into metropolitan reve- nue producers instead of pa- trolmen. Also we have yet to wrap our collective heads around what institutional rac- ism looks like, let alone how to resolve it. And if there's any take away from the events in Ferguson, it's that institutionalized rac- ism is clearly unresolved. And the evidence clearly supports that. Tina Dupuy is a nation- ally syndicated op-ed colum- nist, investigative journalist, award-winning writer, stand- up comic, on-air commentator and wedge issue fan. Tina can be reached at tinadupuy@ya- hoo.com. Darren Wilson isn't the point Tom Purcell OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Wednesday, December 3, 2014 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6