Our Second-Favorite Parenting Columnist

DADDY DRINKS A LITTLE

This rundown of one j-school student’s favorite newspapers points us to “one of the country’s most non-sequitur parenting columns.” It is called Daddy Needs A Drink, and it lives at the Santa Fe Reporter, and, indeed! Here is Rob Wilder on the matter of his very young son’s surprising new hair choices:

London has been growing his locks long for many many moons. Hell, I’ve been growing mine too and even sported a Vandyke to give me that “rock me sexy Jesus” look, but dreads? On a white boy? Never saw it coming, I swear: My beautiful sonchild sporting a mullock (mullet + dreadlock) and morphing into a Boulder hippie, trying to score weed on a lonely street corner, all while wearing socks with leather flip-flops.

Did you get stuck at the beginning there, when you found out his son’s name is London? Love it.

Uh, it has a good beat and you can sing to it?

“How does one discern whether a given song is good or bad for karaoke?” REO Speedwagon’s Kevin Cronin gets zen.

Cameron Todd Willingham's Real Last Words

I recently finished The Lost City of Z, David Grann’s account of the British explorer Percy Fawcett’s final journey in the Amazon basin, where Fawcett disappeared in 1925. Meticulously researched, staunchly reported and beautifully written, it covers the history of London’s Royal Geographic Society, to which Percy belonged, and the 300-year quest for the mythical golden city, El Dorado, as well as the rubber trade and its effect on indigenous tribes who shoot six-foot arrows from seven-foot bows. And piranha, and electric eels and anacondas and poisonous insects that attack your eyes and maggots that fester under your skin and toothpick-sized parasite catfish that swim up your penis through your urethra, lodge themselves there with sharp spines, and kill you. It’s basically like reading a 300-page Indiana Jones movie that teaches you important and incredible things about the world. It’s the best book I read this year. (Don’t worry, Brad Pitt’s making it into a movie.) I picked it up after finishing Trial By Fire, Grann’s story in The New Yorker that made the case that Cameron Todd Willingham, a man executed by the state of Texas in 2004 for murdering his three baby girls by arson, was innocent-that the fire was likely an accident. It’s the best magazine article I read this year.

It ends like this: “Just before Willingham received the lethal injection, he was asked if he had any last words. He said, ‘The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for twelve years for something I did not do. From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return, so the Earth shall become my throne.’”

A letter to the editor revealed that there was more to his last words than that, however.

Also back in October, but apparently, near-totally unnoticed, there was a post over on the legal blog Crime and Consequences that finally did print all of Willingham’s final words. (That blog is a project of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which describes itself as “the only public interest law foundation in the nation working full time to strengthen law enforcement’s ability to assure that crime does not pay.” Its advisers include Edwin Meese III, who is also associated with the Heritage Foundation.)

They wrote:

That poignant end reads almost like a Hollywood script, doesn’t it? He reasserts his innocence, and his very last words are religious. Fade to black. Well, Grann doesn’t actually say those words are the very last, but that is certainly the picture the reader gets. And the statement as Grann reports it is consistent with what we might expect from a person who actually was innocent. Is Grann’s report the truth? Yes, if one defines truth in the Clintonesque way of defensible as not literally false. Is it the whole truth?

(Yes, they couldn’t resist bringing in “Clintonesque.”)

After reading in a local paper that a witness to the execution said that there was more to Willingham’s last words than Grann conveyed, Crime and Consequences’ Kent Scheidegger contacted the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to retrieve a full transcript. Here is what they sent him:

Yeah. The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man-convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return-so the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby. I hope you rot in hell, bitch; I hope you fucking rot in hell, bitch. You bitch; I hope you fucking rot, cunt. That is it.

The witness believed the “bitch” in question was Willingham’s ex-wife Stacy, the mother of his daughters.

Scheidegger takes Grann to task for depicting an execution scene more dramatically in line with the article’s assertion of Willingham’s innocence, and suggests that the omitted vitriol points to a possible motive in the case-something the prosecution struggled to establish in court.

“As incomprehensible as it seems,” Scheidegger wrote, “we know that some fathers do kill their young children, and anger at the mother is one common reason.”

Might Willingham have been guilty after all? I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with the way Grann structured his ending, in light of Willingham’s full statement-but I’m not content with Scheidegger’s takeaway, either. Grann’s story establishes that, after years of supporting Willingham as he waited on death row, Stacy had lost her faith.

Grann wrote:

He asked Stacy if his tombstone could be erected next to their children’s graves. Stacy, who had for so long expressed belief in Willingham’s innocence, had recently taken her first look at the original court records and arson findings. Unaware of Hurst’s report, she had determined that Willingham was guilty. She denied him his wish, later telling a reporter, ‘He took my kids away from me.’

Having your wife, who’d fought in your corner for so long, change her mind and convict you along with the powers-that-be-well, that’s an experience that could easily bring out such a statement right before one is executed. Does knowing the full scope of his final statement change the way you feel about Willingham?

What we've done to the bears.

“Some pictures need little introduction. They stop you in your tracks. These are exclusive pictures to Reuters of a Canadian polar bear eating a cub that it killed and cannibalized.” These pictures are EXTREMELY DISTURBING, and this is one of those “can’t unsee” situations where you should think twice before clicking. But definitely forward the link to all your climate change denialist friends.

Standing in cold weather without a coat won't help much either.

This is why I stick to booze: Caffeine will not sober you up, but it will make you think that you’re less drunk, says Science.

Daisy Klaber: The New Adventures of Old Men, or, Designing Men

by Daisy Klaber

COUNT BAKULA

There are plenty of parts for dudes to play, and lots of them are complicated and interesting, I guess, but that doesn’t make most of those roles any more satisfying than the two-dimensional girlfriend parts available for the ladies. Even gay-man characters, whose “emotions” get screen time because gays are like girls, give me heart failure because most TV writers just don’t believe that I like men. But I like men!

I like hearing from nearly half the world’s adult population-people who used to be boys. I like men so much that I take that back, because there is no such group. I don’t like it when you’re collected and dismissed as hunky, immature idiots. You are not an idiot, Individual Who Is A Man. I mean sometimes you are! But that’s because you’re a person. Being a man does not make you a Penis.

It does not even make you lost, or out of touch with your feelings. You do that all on your own, Individual Man Who’s Checked Out.

There are two reasons I watched Men of a Certain Age on TNT We Know Drama: my Homicide lifetime membership, and because it was on right after The Closer. (Hi Fritz!) My initial impression was that I could have done without the show’s distraction of Ken Jeong because, for one, I sat through The Goods on a DIY ride-all-day movie pass, but you know what? I was pleasantly surprised that the other Men let me cop a feeeel (get it?)-on the first date even. With our eyes open.

Terry (Dr. Sam Beckett, also known as Scott Bakula) and I are taking it kind of slow because even though he’s temping for Blaine town councilman Steve Stark at an accounting firm while having trouble getting it up for acting anymore, he’s also unimaginatively trying to date much-younger barista/writer/Peggy Olson roommate Carla Gallo.

But Owen’s (Dr. Nolan, AKA Andre Braugher) “forty-mother-shit-eight”-year-old, diabetic self has already showed me the pain of being the person you are instead of the person your dad thinks he wants you to be, and also the peace of having created your own family with a wife who loves who you are and shows it. I want to watch him deal with stuff.

Ray Romano, though? He gets my final rose because I bought every word that man uttered, along with every look, movement and depressingly optimistically-depressed shrug. Maybe when you’ve earned a pile of money and you’re an executive producer on a show, you get brave enough to commit fully to Dull. Whatever it is, I’m glad he’s playing Party Depot-owner Joe, because he understands the power of small moments for somebody who thinks maybe there’s a chance either that his life is not a disappointment, or that nobody else has noticed.

I like Men of a Certain Age! They have actual friendships with each other; they’re one another’s nontourage. The show is light without being silly, and, as with most actual men, the only thing that’s edgy about its real-ness is that it’s really not edgy at all.

Seven-year-old Daisy Klaber would have told you she liked men of a certain age, in between worldly swigs of apple juice on the rocks.

Boston You're My Home

This is why I stick to booze: “[S]ince 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.”

Racists Want You To Get Used To It

Says Andrew Sullivan of this anti-health care spot, “It’s an effective ad against something of a straw man…. Conflating wider worries about the intensity of vaguely articulated loathing of Obama as racially tinged with specific worries about health insurance reform is, however, a useful piece of sophism.” I don’t know. I’m of the opinion that it’s always great to see an oppressed group of people attempt to reclaim a word that has been used in the past to cause hurt and shame. I’m thrilled for Republicans that they’re trying to take the “racist” label back. Especially the black ones.

Supposedly There Is Some Sort of Climate Change?

The Atlantic’s James Fallows takes a look at a Times story-headlined “In Face of Skeptics, Experts Affirm Climate Peril”-versus a Washington Post story-headlined “Stolen files of ‘Climate-gate’ suggest some viewpoints on change are disregarded”-on the same topic. He concludes: “Not to overdramatize, but: in a way the papers are betting their reputations with these articles. The Times, that climate change is simply a matter of science versus ignorance; the Post, that this is best treated as another ‘-Gate’ style flap where it’s hard to get to the bottom of the story.”

One Bad Indicator For 2010

REALLY?

Remember how 2009 sucked? Of course you do, as it is still sucking. Brace yourselves, because today comes uncertain-making news about 2010 and its various qualities. Yes, it’s the color of the year. Turquoise, says Pantone, as they do each year now at this time. Because, they say: “Combining the serene qualities of blue and the invigorating aspects of green, Turquoise evokes thoughts of soothing, tropical waters and a languorous, effective escape from the everyday troubles of the world, while at the same time restoring our sense of wellbeing.” Sure, those are my associations with turquoise-not that road trip through southwestern America’s reservation system, where I was frequently chased by packs of wild dogs around smoldering mountains of grade-A American garbage. Notes one blogger: “Cause of death: Barfing.” Also, questions. Questions such as: Pantone, a wholly-owned subsidiary of X-Rite, Inc., is still in business? Doing what-helping us pick bizarrely-copyrighted colors for all our many print publications?