Versus Nurture
Available February 2012

The Best Sniper Ever
Available February 2012

WEEKLY COLUMN:
JDM vs the WORLD

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FINE PRINT

Enter Miguel Estrada, a Hispanic lawyer chosen by George Bush for the US Court of Appeals.

Now, as we speak, Estrada’s confirmation hangs in limbo due to a half dozen filibusters by Senate Democrats. The problem? He won’t gossip about good old Roe v. Wade, which, according to Democrats, makes him a dangerous man—so dangerous, in fact, that they won’t allow an up-or-down vote till they’ve got the goods to prove it. If we’re to believe Senator Charles Schumer, for example, Estrada “is like a stealth missile—with a nose cone—coming out of the right wing’s deepest silo.” He’s a regular one man army, this Estrada guy! His pro-life leanings of mass destruction must be disarmed!

Let’s get one thing straight, though: If Republicans blocked the appointment of a Hispanic judicial nominee like the Democrats are doing, the GOP would be branded as racist and a bunch of sappy attack ads would hit the airwaves by this time tomorrow. In fact, I can almost hear the first one already: “President Bush wants Hispanic children to choose between having dreams and having prescription drugs. Help us send a message to the special interests in Washington. It’s time to give the president a taste of his own hateful medicine. (Paid for by the Friends of NBC’s Friends, Thursdays at 8 on Must See TV).”

But I guess that’s what we get for letting our courts become stages to partisan charades. Both parties are guilty, of course, but two wrongs don’t make a Right… or even a Left on Green.

The way I figure, unless the president nominates an extremist like Ted Kaczynski or Alec Baldwin, appointments should be based on character and competence above all else. Call me idealistic, but ideology should be secondary to whether or not a man can do the job. Of course, that sounds nice in theory, but considering how judges legislate from the bench—it’s their job to interpret the law, after all, even when they end up deleting God from the Pledge—a fair-and-balanced approach is probably just a pipe dream.

Still, it would seem the Estrada affair indicates something larger—like a breakdown in the rule of commonsense and law.

Take a look at all the ridiculous lawsuits we’ve got nowadays, such as those filed against Big Tobacco. I feel bad for folks with lung cancer, don’t get me wrong, but it amazes me how anyone could sue cigarette companies when the warnings on the packs are so clear. Unless you can’t read, ignorance is no excuse—it doesn’t work when you break the speed limit and it shouldn’t work with ignoring the Surgeon General’s kind advice.

Like Denis Leary said in No Cure For Cancer, “You could have cigarettes that were called the Warnings. You could have cigarettes that come in a black pack with a skull and crossbones on the front, called Tumors, and smokers would be lined up around the block.”

Smoking is a personal choice. I’ve chosen against it, personally, but that decision is mine alone, and the same would be true if I took it up an hour from now. The only thing cigarette manufacturers ought to be responsible for is the truth about harmful side effects and keeping their products away from kids. That’s it, though. Grown men and women shouldn’t be seeking rewards for their own errors in judgment.

The same goes for the pinheads who sued McDonald’s because the food made them fat. This lawsuit should offend clear-thinking people of all shapes and sizes. We all know what we’re in for when we go to Mickey D’s. No one forces you to go there. No one older than seven is ever dragged in kicking and screaming or calling for Mom. There’s no McMafia. You enter at your own risk. That’s the power of the dollar, after all: It allows for personal choice. You can choose the 99-cent value menu, or you can choose to go somewhere else. You can have it your way, right away, but what that means is up to you and the courts should have nothing to do with it.

Then there’s the disgraceful lawsuit filed by African-American sisters Grace Fuller and Louis Sawyer against Southwest Airlines. The sisters’ complaint revolves around 22-year-old flight attendant Jennifer Cundiff, who, on a trip from Las Vegas two years ago, said the following: “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe; pick a seat, we gotta go.”

Like a seat in the upright position, her message was straightforward—it was, quite simply, time to sit down. But the aforementioned sisters claim Ms. Cundiff’s words were racially charged, because the original rhyme had something to do with catching an N-word by the toe. Ms. Sawyer told reporters that, because other passengers enjoyed the joke, she felt “alienated.” She added, “It was like I was too dumb to find a seat.”

As far as I’m concerned, if you can’t tell the difference between an innocent rhyme and a racial slur, there’s a good chance you are too dumb to find a seat, much less do anything else on your own. These ladies need to get with the program. Here they want Southwest Airlines employees to undergo sensitivity training, and meanwhile, they could’ve saved everyone the trouble by going up to young Ms. Cundiff after the flight and explaining the origins of the phrase. This wasn’t about feeling “alienated,” though, which is why that wasn’t an option. This was all about greed. People like Ms. Fuller and Ms. Sawyer are to America what looters are to the streets of Baghdad. They want something—anything—and they want it now.

But on the other hand, this is what we get for allowing perfectly good words like “steward” and “stewardess” to be replaced by euphemisms like “flight attendant.” We’ve neutered the English language so as not to offend people who are going to be offended by something or another anyway. Our language could regress into a series of sounds like “eenie,” “meenie,” “minie,” and “moe,” and people will still find something that makes them mad.

And finally, for one last example of justice gone awry, let’s turn to the suit filed by fans of the rock band Creed, who want a refund because lead singer Scott Stapp was under the influence during a show last year.

Now, I don’t care how mediocre the concert might’ve been—as long as it came off as planned, you don’t bring Creed to court just because you had a bad time. There are other ways to strike back at entertainers who’ve made you mad. You can write a letter. You can start a Web site. You can refuse to buy anything bearing their name. But a lawsuit? That’s just uncalled for.

In a way, cases like these transcend their verdicts. It’s the fact that people think they can get away with this stuff that should really have us concerned. Think about the precedent they set every time some judge decides to hear them. It won’t be long now before we start suing Sears whenever we wake up on the wrong side of the bed, or Welsh Farms and the guy who laid our kitchen tiles every time we spill our milk.

Now that I think about it, maybe President Bush should just sue the Democrats on the grounds that their filibusters make him unhappy. Why not? You can pretty much do that nowadays. It might be his best bet for pushing the nomination through.

You know, there’s a saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” which is good enough for cars and lovers but not for our legal system. Our courts aren’t broken entirely, it’s true, but we’re obviously getting there. This is something we’ve known full well since the day OJ Simpson walked out of court and started his search for the real killers. Don’t worry, OJ—you’ll get those punks someday.

I may be overstating my case here, but it seems like justice itself has become a get-rich-quick scheme. Need to pay your phone bill, put your kids through school, or take a trip to Disney? Let’s just grab Fred down the street and drag him through the mud. He won’t mind. He did it to us when he ran up all those medical bills last fall.

At this rate, lawsuits will replace credit cards as currency in the coming cashless society. Who needs an ATM when there’s a jury of your peers?

Of course, there’s always one option for fixing this mess: We could take the Association of Trial Lawyers of America to court for standing in the way of tort reform. Every breath you take, every move you make—everything you do is up for legal review now. That’s not what America’s supposed to stand for. It’s a threat to our future, our way of life and our state of mind. It causes pain and suffering. It must be avenged.

Is there any room left in Gitmo?

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