The Voice of Treason

A few days ago I woke up and saw the coverage concerning a dam in Taunton, MA. Recent rains made the waters swell; old age made the dam vulnerable. My first thought: This is going to put a damper on Mitt Romney’s run for the presidency. My second thought: My city posts signs all over town telling me that my tax dollars are hard at work on new projects, but is anyone paying attention to the old infrastructure?

Boston and the cities around it are old. Several years ago, T had to fly to Boston for some technical training and thought it would be great if I came along. We stayed at a hotel in Newton, and while he was in training, I walked around Newton, Boston, and Allston/Brighton. I liked that you could have a plate of linguine and clams in the North End, then walk right past Paul Revere’s house. Having spent most of my life west of the Mississippi, I appreciate a region that’s seeped in history. When I complained that California was not as rich as the Northeast in historical sites, my stepfather gave me a tour of the old Spanish missions. Felt a little like Kim Novak. Anyway, the missions are interesting, but they’re not John Adams’ house in Quincy or Samuel Adams’ tombstone.

The city I live in is old. If you know where to look, there are sites that predate Mr. Adams. It’s also a city separated by a river, and access from one side to the other is limited. So when I heard that Taunton’s old dam was getting ready to crumble, I wondered how often our bridges here are checked. As soon as the thought entered my head, Mitt Romney appeared to ensure Massachusetts residents that their tax dollars weren’t just going to fund new projects - there was, in fact, endless ongoing projects to preserve what was already there…decaying. That Mitt - he might just be in the running, after all.

And while I’m on the subject of dams, allow me to salute Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park. I was fortunate enough to catch the new episode: Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow.

Synopsis: The world’s largest beaver dam breaks and the waters overtake the adjacent town of Beaverton. As the victims wait for help to arrive, everyone in South Park tackles priority number one: who is to blame? The President, the mayor, scientists, the press and even the flood victims themselves are all busy pointing fingers. Only Stan and Cartman know who’s really at fault.

Sound familiar? It should! Truly a Shpadoinkle episode. (Well done, boys!)

Today is my birthday. I used to wonder why people would say, “Oh, it’s just another day.” Frankly, it’s been just another day for a very long time. Most of the people who know me don’t even know when my birthday is. It’s on a need-to-know basis. And no one needs to know. Well, now you know.

Like I said, T’s mother was here last weekend, so I didn’t post anything. Then I caught this cold, and now we have another guest coming in tomorrow. I figure I’ll just post everything that didn’t get posted up to this point and leave it at that. I will spend the rest of the day watching news coverage of Pamela Vitale’s murder, three little kids a-bobbin’ in the Bay, Wilma (if you liked Katrina, you’ll love Wilma!), and weird conspiracy theories about the Republicans. The one I like is that Dick Cheney will have to resign and Condi Rice will become Vice President so she can easily run for the top job in 2008. Another one is that Mary Matalin is next to be indicted. Wow! That should be an interesting development in the Carville household! And now every time we see Tom DeLay it will be his mugshot. Did all the Hollywood writers get jobs in broadcasting?

It’s like my complaint about the Geena Davis as Prez show. I’d made the observation awhile back that it was a deliberate attempt to grease the way for Hillary. And now we discover that a couple of her assistants are working on the series.

If this is a political ad, then I demand equal time. I think there should be a series about a poor black girl from Birmingham, Alabama who becomes an ice-skater/concert pianist/scholar/professor/university Provost/National Security Advisor/Secretary of State/P.O.T.U.S and looks fabulous in tall leather boots with stiletto heels.

Can’t wait for the pilot.

I heard they found Charles Rocket, in a field not far from his home in Connecticut, with his throat slashed. This was ruled a suicide. It made me think how every now and then I watch awards show and they do a segment on all the people who assumed room temperature during the year. Inevitably, there’s always someone who stands out. I didn’t know he’d died! Or worse: I thought she’d died years ago!

It got me to thinking. I heard that someone famous had recently died and I was surprised that he had been alive somewhere and I didn’t know it. Out of the public eye and you’re as good as dead, I suppose. If your career is dead, so are you. Sad.

But I started thinking about the day I mentioned casually to our Artistic Director that Ann Miller had died. Mistake. I hadn’t realized that this would be devastating news to him. From that point on I stopped myself from blurting out that someone famous had shuffled off his or her mortal coil.

Now and then I’ll catch an obit that will stop me in my tracks. But I suspect that there are a lot of deaths that go unnoticed. This made me hop onto Wikipedia to look for dead people. Conveniently, they’re listed - alphabetically - by year. I searched 2005, then worked backwards until I was overwhelmed. Do you realize how many dead people there are?

I would see a name and try to remember if I’d heard something in the news. Dave Allen. Long John Baldry. Jimmy Capaldi. Donn Clendenon. Jason Evers. Christopher Fry. Did I hear about Evan Hunter when he passed? Aw. Vicky La Motta’s gone. Debralee Scott? And in 2004, Gerald Anthony.

I’m at that point, too, I’ve noticed. That point where your parents and grandparents were when they’d read the obituaries in the paper and look at the ages. I’m looking at ages. Debralee Scott lost her fiancee on September 11, then moved to Florida to be with an ailing sister. After her arrival, she collapsed, recovered, then died a few days later. Early fifties. Gerald Anthony was pretty young, too. The coroner said suicide, the family insists heart attack. I liked him very much. He was the reason I arranged my class schedule around certain soap operas. I was happy to see he found himself on Wiseguy, but it wasn’t much of a role. Ray Sharkey had the role of a lifetime on the same show, but he did the typical Ray Sharkey thing. He allowed his career to go off track after The Idolmaker and again after Wiseguy. I never got to tell him how pissed off I was that I had to sit through some of the worst films ever made just to catch his performances. Sometimes I’ll see a movie and think: Ray would have been perfect for this. But he’s dead.

And now so is Charles Rocket, a.k.a. Charles Claverie, Charles Hamburger, and Charles Kennedy. He leaves a wife and daughter.

I live in a state where voter fraud is common. So common, in fact, that no one raises an eyebrow when the dominant party conveniently “finds” just enough votes to win. “Oh, we forgot to count these. Oh, look! Just the right number - you don’t win, after all. We do.”

I was born in a state where voter fraud was responsible, some say, for securing the presidency for John Kennedy. My father died when I was ten, but I suspect he’s still voting in Chicago.

When we lived in California, my sister was convinced that Republican ballots went into special boxes and were destroyed. I wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s why I’ve become a paranoid voter. I voted a straight party ticket a few years ago by simply pressing one button. I usually don’t take these types of shortcuts, but the line was long, and I thought the polite thing to do was get in and out quickly and make sure everyone got their chance at the ballot.

Mistake. There was a “glitch.” Those votes didn’t get counted correctly. Now I don’t care how long it takes, I’m not taking any shortcuts. I don’t even leave a category blank. One year it was a race between a Democrat and a Green. In order to avoid a blank spot, I voted for the Green.

Years ago when I used paper ballots (you know, the ones with the hanging chads?), I’d examine the ballot closely before I dropped it in the box. If you don’t line those suckers up just right, they don’t work. I had to manually poke out paper pieces with my finger to be sure my votes would be counted correctly. Be warned.

So when I heard this week that there might be evidence of voter fraud in Iraq, I was confused. I keep hearing from the other side that it’s just taking soooooooooo long for these people to draft a Constitution and get their democracy up and running. Balderdash. Not only have they done this quicker than our Founding Fathers, but they’ve even jumped ahead and have, possibly, adopted the very democratic method of cheating. This is amazing how quickly they’ve caught on.

The reason they suspect voter fraud is that there was just too big a turnout in some areas. Silly Iraqis. Obviously they haven’t figured out the way we Americans do it. We sit home on our asses, let other people vote, then bitch when it doesn’t go our way.

They’ll need to work on that.

Anyone catch the fake flood footage on The Today Show? From what I understand, the reporter protested, saying the water wasn’t deep enough for her to do the story from inside a canoe. She was told: You WILL get into the canoe. Fearing that she’d probably end up doing local news in Sandusky, she got into the canoe and started paddling.

Then two guys walked past her and her little boat…in ankle-high water. Hmmm. I didn’t realize Dan Rather had moved to NBC.

Does any American really know his or her pedigree? I imagine some families keep records, but I’ve noticed that few people I speak with really know and don’t even seem to care. I grilled T on this when we met. Why does it matter, he asked. Just curious. So tell me. I don’t know and I don’t care. Why do you?

Finally he told me that he thought he’d heard that someone in the family tree was somehow related to John Adams and that the family was Dutch. There was even a book - an actual book published - that traced the history of the family. This was fascinating to me. All I knew about my family is that my mother’s side was from Italy - probably Abruzzo - and settled in New York. When my grandfather couldn’t take anymore of my grandmother’s family, he picked up and moved to Ashtabula, Ohio. My grandmother’s family followed. Desperate, he chose a location where he believed no one in their right mind would follow them: Erie, PA.

They came here on boats and passed through Ellis Island with all the other immigrants. Happily, they didn’t alter the family name. I like the name because of its translation. It’s the Italian word for a particular animal that I like very much. No, not dog. Not bee. Not elephant. Not…I digress.

Anyway, a few years ago, my sister sent me a document that she received from someone on my father’s side. This person had taken the time to research the nuts in our family tree. As far back as I can remember, my sister was interested in roots. (I should have known that she would be the one who would have all the kids.) So, when we were little, she decided for some reason that our family was “Italianenglishgermanfrenchanddutch.”

When someone would ask, I’d recite: “We’re Italianenglishgermanfrenchanddutch.”

Did she have any proof of this? No, not really. I had a baby book and my father listed some family names. My mother had mentioned some things, too, that he had told her about his family. But what my mother failed to keep in mind was that my father had a vivid imagination and told her, who was twenty years his junior, any load of crap he could to spark her interest and convince her to leave her Italian family and move to Chicago with him.

Frankly, it didn’t take much to get her to leave Erie. But all I knew about my father’s family is that they had settled in Virginia (my mother said my father said they came over on the Mayflower, but I’m skeptical) and his father was English. Dad left home at sixteen because his brothers’ educations were encouraged, but because he was so physically strong, his father wanted him to stay on the farm and work. I understand they raised horses. But that whole story could be horseshit, not horse farm, for all I know.

Anyway, he left home and traveled by train from city to city with a Boston terrier. The story gets much more interesting, but I’ll stop here. I might want to write a novel some day and this is some tasty material.

I do know his mother was Dutch. This then explains the Italian/English/Dutch part of my sister’s equation, but I still don’t get the German and French part. I think she made that up for added interest.

As for T, I asked his mother (who’s here visiting now) a few years ago about the Dutch thing. She was confused. Where did he get that? There was a marriage at some point, and relatives in the Netherlands, but she didn’t know of any blood relation who might be associated with windmills, tulips, or wooden shoes. So, this weekend, when the three of us attended the local Highland games, I tried again. German? English? Irish? Scottish? Her response: “Yeah, probably a bit of all of that, I’m afraid.”

T’s last name, like mine, is rare and unusual. That’s why my family thought it was odd that when we moved to California there was another family with my father’s last name living a few blocks away. We knew they existed, and they knew we existed, but neither side contacted the other. When my sister produced that document, it confirmed that they were, indeed, closely related.

The origin of T’s surname is, according to some sources, Old English. Very old. Others insist it’s very old German with a Saxon twist. Could even be medieval Prussian or Danish. Doesn’t matter, T doesn’t care.

I know his roots have to be Northern European, so I figured he might find something to like about the Celtic Festival slash Highland games. We’d gone several years ago because I’m into tartan and bagpipes. We went this time because there would be dogs. Wolfhounds, deerhounds, greyhounds, terriers. There would be…lure coursing.

Frankly, there was a lot of very cool things going on and we had a great time. But a Scottish society wanted to recruit us. If I guessed that at some time my father’s family mixed and mingled with Germans, Irish, and Scottish, I’d probably be correct. But I have no proof. T is a better candidate for it. My sister married a Scot, but that doesn’t count. Doesn’t matter, we were told. You can join if you’d like to be Scottish.

What an interesting concept! If I like Scottish things (shortbread, tartan, heather, bagpipes, deerhounds, men in skirts), then I can join! It got me thinking about the local Italian-American group. Can someone who likes lasagna and Scorsese films join?

The melting pot is producing mush. I’d like some flavors to stand out a little - I want some beef, a carrot, some onion and potato. Maybe even a turnip. But when all the ingredients are so well blended that you can’t tell what you’re eating…well, I like the combination of flavors, but I appreciate the individual flavors to stand up and be counted.

I’m going to have to take an unpopular position on this one. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but when I was in college I found a pamphlet on my front porch. It was a “gift” from the Aryan Nation. Most of it was an illustration of why blacks are, in fact, gorillas. There were extensive diagrams, too, that included arrows pointing at scent glands. You know, those glands that black people have that make them smell kind of musky and jungly? It’s why, the pamphlet explained, black people use Lifebuoy soap. It takes a strong product to mask the musk.

It would be easy to say that crap like this shouldn’t be published. It was full of examples of how you can take the boy out of the jungle, but you can never quite take the jungle out of the boy. Doesn’t matter how educated, how well-dressed, how articulate, or how financially successful he is, he will revert to jungle behavior at the drop of a hat.

Their brains just aren’t the same as white folks’ brains, the pamphlet explained. They’re more like animals: reason is just not a part of their makeup. You can think they’ve been domesticated, but you provoke ‘em, and watch out.

Yes, there are people who believe this. With every fiber of their being, they know this to be fact. A lot of these people happen to be white. Does this mean that every white person on the planet believes this? Is every white person a racist?

If someone can believe that, then why isn’t it fair to say that the thugs who rioted in Toledo are perfect representatives of the African-American population? All the Neo-Nazis had to do was stand there and watch the rioters make their point for them. See? They’ll just riot, burn, and loot and do it to their own community. Didn’t they loot, rape, and murder in Nawlins? (Uh, no, not necessarily. The media repeated hearsay and called it fact. What made these journalists so quick to report stories that a lot of Americans thought sounded too bizarre to be true? Lust for ratings? Or do these people assume that blacks will act this way? I haven’t yet heard explanations from any network representatives. Still waiting…)

And now well-meaning whites are saying, “What do you expect?” You let Nazis hold a rally in the ‘hood, and of course blacks are going to react. “The Nazis shouldn’t have been allowed to hold that rally.”

So what people are saying - and a lot of them are white journalists who’d rather eat live hamsters than be called racist (same ones who were so quick to report imaginary rapes and murders in Nawlins) - is that the city officials should have known there was going to be…uh, misbehavior as a result of a White Supremacist rally. The rally should not have happened. They should have just said no.

Excuse me. I recall something somewhere - a document, I think - that says Americans have certain rights. They have certain freedoms. They can assemble and express all sorts of speech. There’s nothing that says they can only do that if it doesn’t offend someone.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I didn’t see the Nazis throw rocks at police cars and ambulances, or kick in doors and windows and burn buildings. They appeared to be concentrating on their rally. So obviously this means I’m a fascist. I’m a Nazi. I think it’s a good idea for Neo-Nazis to hold rallies in Compton, D.C., Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, Gary, Nawlins - wherever black folks like to hang out.

It pains me to side with the ACLU, really it does, but I’m going to have to. Didn’t the ACLU defend the rights of Nazis when they wanted to march through Skokie, Illinois? And didn’t they defend them when they wanted to burn ACLU headquarters?

ACLU president Nadine Strossen told reporters that her organization intends to “vigorously and passionately defend” the Georgia chapter of the American Nazi Party’s First Amendment right to freely express its hatred of the ACLU by setting its New York office ablaze on Nov. 25.

“I am reminded of the words of Voltaire: ‘I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,’” Strossen said. “While the ACLU vehemently disagrees with the idea of Nazis torching this building, the principle of freedom of expression must be supported in all cases. If we take away these Nazis’ right to burn down our headquarters, we take away everyone’s right to burn down our headquarters.”

Buddy Carver, president of the Georgia chapter of the American Nazi Party, praised the ACLU for taking on his case. “I would like to thank Ms. Strossen and all the other nigger-loving bleeding-heart liberals at the ‘ACL-Jew’ for defending my constitutional right to express my loathing of them with hundred-foot-high flames,” said Carver, sporting a tan uniform and swastika arm band. “We must finish the job Hitler was unable to.”

ACLU associate director Mel Rosenblatt agreed. “The real danger here is not the American Nazi Party,” he said. “The real danger here is what would happen to the rest of us if the Buddy Carvers of this world were not allowed to commit arson against nigger-loving, bleeding-heart-liberal Jew attorneys.”

“We can have no arbitrary setting of limits when it comes to the Bill of Rights,” Strossen said. “The Constitution does not say, ‘You have the right to express these opinions, but not those opinions.’ Nor does it say, ‘You can express these opinions by word, but not by violence.’ For a free society to work, hatred, in all its forms, must be encouraged.”

Ugh. Okay, The Onion was having fun with this, but the point is well-taken. There are a lot of groups I don’t agree with, and I’m sure they don’t agree with me. If that offends them, can they prevent me from holding a rally to express my point of view? It sounds, to me, like someone could get a petition or write a letter that suggests a group might turn violent if my rally is scheduled. It’s like atheists who are offended by religious symbols. “I really don’t like that cross on that church. Take it down. It offends me.” (I remember when atheists were more fun. Now they’re just getting whiny.)

I’d mentioned my opposition to breed banning even though we were just attacked by a pit bull. First pit bulls, then what? Where does it end? Ban Nazis, then who gets muzzled next?

If memory serves, Skokie officials thought Nazis marching through a city with a large Jewish population (remember, I was raised in a Jewish neighborhood in Chicago) was a bad idea and wouldn’t allow it. The ACLU interceded. The group had a right to march (no matter how offensive or ill-advised). They were allowed, then, to march, but didn’t on the scheduled day because so many counterdemonstrations had been planned.

And that’s what I’d prefer. Let a group express themselves. But give another group equal time. Make signs. Write speeches. If individuals could assemble without beating the crap out of each other and destroying property, then maybe this could work.

But I guess it’s easier to express yourself with rocks and lighter fluid.

Call me a romantic, but I can watch 1776 and get goosebumps. And it has nothing to do with William Daniels - even though he made a devastatingly appealing John Adams. Okay, okay, Daniels is cute as a button, I admit it, but the reason I get the bumps is that it’s so exciting to see a group of people changing the course of history - in a good way.

Imagine those upstarts! Having the garbanzos to stand up to King George and declare their independence! It’s heady stuff. The Iraqis will be voting on their new Constitution this weekend, and there’s carping here about it not being perfect. Our own Constitution was compromised - who are we to nitpick?

Anyway, I’m excited for them. Here’s to ink-stained digits!

I owe my friend an e-mail. He and his partner moved back east last week and since then his neck of the woods has been subjected to both terrorist threats and flooding. Welcome to New York. He’s a talented lad, to be sure, and I hope I see him win a Tony one day. I barely knew him when I looked up from my desk and saw him there, topless, in fishnet stockings and stilettos. He was looking for parts of his Liza costume. Frankly, he is Liza.

Anyway, he’s a sweet kid and I wish him all the luck in the world. He’s living in Jersey and commuting to Times Square, probably wondering what’s going to happen next. A ten foot wall of water on Broadway? An exploding train? A trifle compared to auditioning for a show. Now that’s really scary!

I hadn’t been at that job long when a woman came into the office and started asking a lot of questions about him. She explained that she was his mother and just wanted to know what he’d been up to and if I had any photos or videos or tidbits of information I could share. I was torn. She seemed nice enough, but I wondered why she couldn’t get that from her son. Turns out they were estranged, but she made it sound like it was his choice. The tormented mother; I wanted to help. But then I hesitated. First, would I want someone divulging information about me to someone who claimed to be my mother? Would this be a betrayal? I hadn’t gotten all that close to him, but I already had made up my mind that he was someone I was going to like.

I figured there were people who would have more details about this mother-son relationship, so I took her name and number and she left. The Executive Director suggested that I avoid any involvement. The organization could be opening itself up to a lawsuit. I’d considered that. I assumed I was a representative of the company - that’s why I went to the top for an opinion. Time passed and the Artistic Director and Music Director had more information about the relationship. My friend was very close to his father (I knew him, too), but it was his mother who chose to “estrange herself.” I can’t remember now if it was because of her religious beliefs, her dislike of the kid’s chosen profession, or dislike of his relationship with his dad, but the result was that they had no contact.

She was obviously crazy about my friend - who wouldn’t be? Smart, talented, good natured, funny, and a joy to be around. She was missing out on his college education and the development of a career. He always had a million things going on in his life and she wasn’t one of them. I couldn’t understand why she just couldn’t contact him and be a part of his life again. Instead she sneaked around, trying to get information about him from strangers.

It reminded me of the people who were ticked off at Dick Cheney because his daughter’s a lesbian. Did you want him to take her out to the backyard and stone her? He loves her; isn’t that the correct thing for a parent to do?

Anyway, I’m excited for my friend. He’s made a decision of a lifetime: trying his luck on The Great White Way. I can picture his mother cutting out articles and photos from newspapers and magazines, and crossing her fingers when he’s nominated for his first Tony. And I feel sad for both of them.

Nothing like screaming during a pit bull attack to permanently damage your vocal chords. Five days later and I still sound like I’ve been chain smoking and downing large amounts of bourbon. I imagine this will pass.

I’m hoping the paranoia will, too. I hate walking our dogs - something that should be relaxing and enjoyable - and being on high alert. T and I will hear a jingle and freeze. Oh, it’s someone with a key chain - not a pit bull. Whew.

I’m sitting here watching D sleep. He just opened his eyes to look at me. I’ve known a lot of dogs in my life, but this one has to be the sweetest. He’s just a good dog. The poor thing gets two insulin shots a day and has sore legs and paws, and after cataracts surgery has limited vision - especially at night. He could have been ripped apart last Friday for absolutely no reason.

T says he’d rather be tattered and scarred than have the sound in his head of our dogs shrieking as they were torn to pieces. He prevented that. He saved their lives. I’m relieved that the outcome wasn’t as bad as it could have been. But I’m really pissed off about that pit bull. Our neighbor - the one with the Boxer cross - was down the street with her kids a couple weeks ago and there were two pit bulls outside a store. Just loose, wandering pit bulls.

There was a time that a person could walk through a neighborhood and know what kind of area they were in. In the driveways: BMW, Land Rover, Lexus, Jeep Grand Wagoneer. In the yards: Vizsla, Weimaraner, German Shorthaired Pointer, Golden Retriever, Brittany Spaniel. Yuppie puppies. Other neighborhoods? American-made trucks, Fords, Chevys, Camaros, Harleys, pit bulls, Rottweilers, Dobermans.

Now every idiot in Suburbia wants a muscle dog. Believe me, I don’t dislike pit bulls. There was a period in America when everyone had an “Our Gang” dog - even my mother’s family in Erie, PA had a version of Pete (who was, technically, an Am Staff). They didn’t know what breed he was, they just knew he was their dog and they loved him. But as great a dog as he was, he had a problem with women in fur coats. After he attacked one, my aunt’s husband took the dog out on a hunting trip and didn’t bring him back. Years later, the uncle was out on another trip and a friend accidentally shot him. He lost an eye. My mother’s family said he deserved it just because of what he did to their dog. They called it justice. (Crazy Italians, what can I say?)

Like I’ve said before, there are breeds I admire and love, but they’re not the ones I can live with. When my mother came home with two male Am Staff puppies, my sister and I thought it had to be the stupidest thing she’d ever done. Right up there with bringing home a raccoon for my tenth birthday. I loved that raccoon, but I know I don’t want to live with one again. We were blessed that the Am Staff we had was a good dog. We made my mother return his brother, Victor, to the breeders immediately because he growled when I walked into the house. That, to me, isn’t normal puppy behavior. George, on the other hand, pretended to be retarded, so we kept him - even though we had other dogs and cats in the house. There was never an incident. When I’d walk him, he’d look at other dogs and they’d look at him, then quickly look away and keep walking. I don’t know how much George weighed, but I imagine he was anywhere from 120 to 140 pounds. A formidable dog. He was like a slab of concrete covered with velvet. Yet the worse thing he ever did was develop crushes on a variety of female dogs in the neighborhood, so when we walked he insisted that we had to stop by each one’s house. For some reason, he fell in love with a beautiful Boxer who lived several blocks away. We’d start heading home and he’d pull me towards her neighborhood. He always won - I’d have to turn around and head for her house. It didn’t matter that she was never there to be seen. He’d just sit in front of her house with a dreamy expression on his face. After awhile, he’d be ready to go home, so we’d head back to our house. But his walks were never satisfying unless he could visit his girlfriends. He was living with a beautiful female Boxer - my Barbara - but he had no interest in her at all. Go figure. And, like all our pets, George was “fixed” as soon as he was old enough to be operated on. I think he just had a weird romantic streak.

He was beautiful. When I’d walk him, vehicles would slow down, and guys would call out: “Great dog!” He was. He was so smart it was scary. But he had common sense and all he really wanted to do was play tug-of-war with his rope toy. He wasn’t mean. He wasn’t a liability. However, his sister Teddy, the littermate the breeders kept, was a crazed baby killer. She even attacked her own mother. I stopped walking past their house because I thought Teddy would burst through the livingroom window one day. I just didn’t trust her.

And years before George, I had Autumn. A red Doberman who was a liability. My sister convinced me that I had to save her and even though I knew it was a stupid idea, I couldn’t bear the thought of her suffering. It’s a story I’ll save for another time. But I learned that no matter how much you love a breed or a particular dog, some dogs just aren’t the right choice. When Bill O’Reilly did a story on pit bulls and practically called for a ban on the breed, I was outraged. I e-mailed him immediately:

“Bill. You are obviously a cat person.”

Harsh words, but I was angry. My argument was that you can’t judge an entire breed by a few miscreants. German Shepherds are fine dogs, trained as guides, companions, police officers, soldiers, and rescuers. But hasn’t everyone encountered a “bad” German Shepherd at some time? Is that reason to ban them?

There’s currently legislation brewing in our town to ban pit bulls. I’ve always been against these types of laws because I don’t like the idea of banning a breed. This is America, damn it, and a person should be able to have the dog of his choice. Where I have a problem is if the owner doesn’t take on the enormous responsibility of owning a dog that could be a danger. Any dog can be a threat, but some breeds have more of a track record. I don’t want to live in a town where pit bulls are banned. Does that mean American Staffordshire Terriers are banned, too? Boxers? Bullmastiffs? Bull terriers? Any dog that has a brindle coat? Where does it end? Will my dog be confiscated if it looks like a pit bull and I can’t prove that it isn’t?

It would be easy for me to have a knee-jerk reaction after Friday night and say that all potentially aggressive dogs need to go away. But that’s like Bill Bennett’s statement about aborting black babies. Maybe the rate of dog attacks would dwindle, but I do not support banning breeds. Like Bennett said about eliminating black babies, it would be ridiculous and morally reprehensible. And it doesn’t address the real problem: irresponsible pet owners. Get rid of all the bull breeds, and the next thing you know there will be marauding Clumber Spaniels terrorizing neighborhoods. Do you then ban all the spaniels?

A couple years ago, I was walking my dogs through the neighborhood and saw someone with a Dogo Argentino. I’d heard they’d started breeding them in my state but I didn’t think I’d ever see one up close and personal. A beautiful dog. Looked a lot like my George. But I turned and went the other way. I know what the breed is capable of and I didn’t want to find out the hard way if it was a good Dogo or a bad Dogo.

All I’m asking is that if a person chooses a particular breed, whether it’s a Jack Russell Terrier or a Fila Brasileiro, he knows the breed and is a responsible pet owner. We were just out walking earlier today and a loose Min Pin came running out of a driveway and started to cross the street. I shouted at it to go home. It paused, then kept coming. At this point we have two options. We can let our dogs - one seventy pounds, the other eighty - defend themselves, or T can punt the loose dog back across the street. I just don’t want to have to make that choice.