A World Full of Sensitive People

First off, for all of our male readers, Happy Man Day! You’ve earned it so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Anyway, today we are going to take a look at the sensitive world around us. For example, we would never sell John Wilkes-Booth bobblehead bdolls at a Lincoln museum. Oh wait. Well, never mind, they’ve been removed.

In other sensitive news, a cop filed charges against his girlfriend for beating him with a Justin Bieber doll. No steak for him.

Speaking of cops, as you all know it is our ability to deal with others in an amicable and equitable way that sets us apart from the lower life forms. It is also our ability to see reason in chaos that allows us to progress. So, when we see a city finally cracking down on illegal drug sales we applaud their attempt to right a serious wrong.

Who am I kidding? We protest our inability to sell crack.

In most cities, residents would be happy if 30 people were arrested for selling crack, cocaine, marijuana and firearms in their neighborhood.

But not in Ferriday, La.

Instead, some residents in the neighborhood are livid, saying the arrests are making it harder for them to sell their own drugs.

“You have to realize, we don’t have no jobs around here or nothing,” Derrick Brown told KALB.com. “Every time we try to make a little something to get on our feet or try to feed our family they come kicking the doors in and knocking us back down again.”

All 30 arrests came Friday in Ferriday — a town of 3,723 people most famous for being the birthplace of rocker Jerry Lee Lewis — after a yearlong joint investigation called Delta Blues involving federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

The investigation, which targeted a local gang called the Sixth Street Boys, led to the seizure of 8 oz. of crack cocaine, a half kilo of powdered cocaine, 20 lbs. of marijuana, as well as firearms, currency and three vehicles, according to the Natchez Democrat.

Concordia Parish Sheriff Randy Maxwell told the Natchez Democrat that the operation was a huge success and that he was glad to see longtime dealers off the streets.

“It was a great success and the reason was because of the great cooperation with all of the agencies,” Maxwell said. “We got a lot of the big time players and longtime dealers in the parish.”

KALB.com reporter Brooke Buford said on air that she was surprised by Brown’s reaction to the bust, but former narcotics cop Neill Franklin, the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition said this is old news to anyone familiar with the drug war.

“[Brown] made so much sense,” Franklin told the Huffington Post. “This is an economic issue. In communities like these, there is no opportunity for employment or education. These people have to make money to buy food and pay bills. If there are no jobs, what do you expect they’ll do?” The LEAP organization works to advocate for effective drug policies.

Ferriday Mayor Glen McGlothin told The Huffington Post that Buford’s piece didn’t tell the full story, but adds, “I would like to think that’s because she is young.”

“There are lots of people who are happy about the drug bust, but they are people who believe in law and order and were scared because of all the drugs.”

He said that the people who are complaining that the only jobs available involve selling drugs don’t see that they are part of the problem. “I assume people would rather start businesses in areas where drugs aren’t being sold,” he said.

Robert Housman, who was assistant director for strategic planning in the White House drug czar’s office during the Clinton Administration, said the notion that selling drugs is the only option for Ferriday residents is “nonsense.”

“There have been studies on the economics of drug-buying,” Housman told The Huffington Post. “When you consider things like the risk and the costs of the drugs, you don’t make a lot of money. Most people who sell are not eking out a living, they’re merely supporting their own drug habit.”

Franklin said he believes that providing economic and education opportunities to people in poor neighborhoods is the key to reducing the drug trade, but Housman said drug-buying habits are the reasons there are fewer opportunities.

“People don’t want to open up businesses in neighborhoods like this,” he said. “But many of these people selling drugs do have good business minds and could succeed if they applied themselves.”

Amway anyone? Before they try and turn those nice people into sales reps they really need to help alleviate the many other problems that are besieging their city. If almost all your residents are dealing drugs that means the customers are coming from somewhere else.

Of course, while we claim that we want to be tough on crime we still cringe when we read about 9 year old kids who got tasered for ditching school.

An Ohio police officer says he used a stun gun twice on a 9-year-old who skipped school because the child refused to cooperate with his commands.

Details of the incident, which resulted in the shutdown of a village police force, were released Monday, The Columbus Dispatch reported. The Mount Sterling officer went to the boy’s home on a truancy complaint last week. He says the child’s mother warned the boy, who weighs between 200 and 250 pounds, to obey the officer or he’d be shocked.

According to a copy of the police report provided by the mayor’s office to msnbc.com, the officer wrote that the boy “dropped to the floor and became dead weight” and lay on his hands to prevent being handcuffed.

Wait? This kid weighs as much as me? At freaking 9? Didn’t his mom get the memo? Hot dogs cause butt cancer.

A billboard is bluntly telling Chicagoans that hot dogs cause “butt cancer” — and the hot dog industry is not amused.

The billboard is one of a series of ads being put up in major cities by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, or PCRM, urging people to stop eating hot dogs, which it says are a leading cause of colon and other cancers.

The National Hot Dog & Sausage Council — which you can find at the wonderful URL hot-dog.org — reacted immediately to the billboard, which went up recently on the Eisenhower Expressway.

Calling the ad “outrageous” and “inflammatory,” the trade group dismissed the PCRM as a “pseudo-medical animal rights group” bent on turning all Americans into vegans.

I guess the one thing we can do is thank God that racism is finally dead.

Oh hell, never mind. A clerk working at a Radio Shack issued a receipt for a refund to an African-American woman claiming she lived in Ghettohood USA.

That’s just outside of Dayton.

Receipts are supposed to prove that a customer bought an item at a store.

However, one Radio Shack employee allegedly gave a woman an additional message on her receipt: One calling her an “ugly itch” from “Ghettohood, USA.”

Shanae Lewis of Baltimore got the disturbing message on Monday when she went to a Radio Shack in nearby Montgomery County, Md., to buy a $20 cassette adapter for her car.

The county has a five-cent bag tax on top of sales tax that Lewis was unaware of, so, according to WUSA-TV, she went back and forth with the clerk before deciding not to buy the adapter at all.

She said what happened next is one of the worst examples of bad customer service anyone has ever seen, according to Consumerist.

It seems when the salesman gave Lewis back her money, he also gave her a receipt for the refund, at the bottom of which he apparently typed in “ugly itch, ghettohood, usa, tattoville, Maryland.”

The salesman reportedly claimed he was only kidding, but Lewis was, and remains, unamused.

“I was shocked more so than anything, and then I became angry,” she told WUSA-TV.

At first, she tried to complain to the store manager, who reportedly wanted nothing to do with her complaint, so Lewis contacted Radio Shack’s corporate office about the ordeal hopes the associate will be fired, WTVR reported.

A RadioShack official told WUSA that after seeing the story, it took “the strongest possible disciplinary actions,” but did not specify what they were.

In an email response to the station, RadioShack wrote: “Based on descriptions we’ve seen in the media, this incident obviously does not meet RadioShack’s expectations for customer service.”

It added, “The Company has made several attempts to contact the customer involved and offer her a personal apology. So far we’ve been unable to connect, although we have conveyed our regrets to another person in her household.”

Lewis may be able to forgive, but not forget. She said Radio Shack has lost a customer.

“I want nothing to do with Radio Shack ever again,” Shanae said.

Radio Shack continues to win friends the world over, just like on this site dedicated to people who will never set foot in one again.

They need a new PR company. Maybe the same one who works for the Jet Strip Strip Club which saved youth baseball in Los Angeles.

Little League baseball players from an unincorporated area of Los Angeles will reportedly get to play ball this season thanks to a charitable donation from the unlikeliest of donors.

Jet Strip, a gentlemen’s club in Lennox, has donated $1,200 to the Lennox Little League, which has been strapped for cash after the Lennox School District imposed some new regulations, according to the Daily Breeze.

A call to the district was not immediately returned.

The donation, along with those from other businesses, will allow 300 little leaguers to play at least one more season, but the league’s president, Roberto Aguirre, still isn’t optimistic about the long-term future of the league.

“It feels good to be from Lennox when people do stuff like that,” Aguirre said to the paper. “At the same time, the future is very scary for us, because [the donation] is a one-time deal.”

James Wallace, Jet Strip’s general manager, is also a 15-year member of the Lennox Coordinating Council, comparable to an unofficial city council of the community.

Wallace told the paper that he likes to keep the gentlemen’s club’s donations quiet.

“We don’t really like to brag about it,” he said.

The school board has also received donations of $1,000 and $600 from the little league in Westchester and the council, respectively.

But Aguirre told the paper that the bigger problem facing the league is the inability to sell food at games.

Citing health concerns, the K-8 district stopped the league from selling grilled foods, like hamburgers and hot dogs, though it has installed a drain, and a local non-profit, YouthBuild, has promised to build a snack bar for free.

“People don’t want candy, candy, candy – chips, chips, chips,” Aguirre said. “They want hamburgers, hot dogs and french fries.”

But raising the $65,000 necessary for materials to build a snack bar will be tough for a community that is economically depressed.

Lennox is a small, mile-by-mile community adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport that is so impoverished, the league offers families a payment plan so that some can afford the annual $85 it costs to play in the league.

“We’re looking up in the sky and hoping for something great,” Aguirre told the paper. “If this snack stand happens, it’s going to be the best thing that could happen for our league.”

You hear that Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine? People want freaking hot dogs. And they’ll gladly put up with a little butt cancer to save a little league team or two.