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02/24/2006: "Rants and Raves, This and That."

This won't be a very informative column today. But if you're interested in rants and raves and this and that you might want to stick around. Talking about sticking around, guess who has been spending hours and days and taking up lots of bandwidth stalking my site trying to find something to base a lawsuit on?

Ah, but the truth is an absolute defense. I'm sure his expert lawyer who has also been paying my site lots of visits knows that.

Talking about the truth, when we give an opinion is that the truth? I wonder.

Back in the seventies I wrote an editorial in my paper about abortion. Well, I think that might have been the first time in history when the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church --- not to mention my mother --- agreed on anything. They all wanted to boil me in oil. They came down to the paper in mass to tell me off and then wrote a letter to the editor talking about "the young writer."

Of course, they couldn't sue me for my opinion. I'm sure they would have loved to. God help you if you disagree with anyone, especially a church. Of course, three decades later I think my opinion might have been wrong. But three decades later no one still really has the answer so have we progressed at all?

I have less opinions now then when I was young. I now know that I know much less than I did in my twenties and thirties. It's amazing how smart we tend to think we are in those two decades of life. Life becomes less black and white as we grow in life. We discover life is a shade of gray. And as a journalist I was taught to be objective. So I tend to see both sides of a story clearly. That can present lots of problems. But it does make one a good writer.

Talking about lawsuits --- have you ever thought about what a lawsuit really is? Of course, basically it's the way to give a lawyer a living. But what a person really wants to do when he sues you is take a gun and shoot you in the head. But let's face it, that's not nice. It's not legal. And it's awfully messy. So they file a suit and hope to relieve you of some money and in general make a nuisance of themselves. I have lots of lawyers in my family and I know how they love lawsuits. What a lot of crap. I'm glad I opted out of that career.

And so it goes.