Note: Since these acronyms are being picked up by the mainstream media, they are probably already out of date … There ARE teenagers, you know.
Category: Parenting
-
The OC Register: He’s just not that into me anymore
** UPDATE: The folks at the Register have fixed the problem. Not just for me (the squeaky wheel) but for the whole neighborhood. Insert Happy Dance ***
Sad, cold, and wet people searching for their Sunday OC Register It had all of the signs of a romance in doom.
First, there was The Rush: Despite cutbacks and layoffs and closures at other newspapers across the country, the Orange County Register issued promises of grandeur. The new owner, Aaron Kushner, was expanding the paper: hiring new reporters, creating daily local sections, and giving away ad space to local nonprofits. They brought back beats like Religion (where I tend to be a mainstay) and Classical Music (which was great for my then-role with the Orange County Women’s Chorus). I was elated—I had butterflies in my stomach every morning, excited about what I would read when I opened my morning paper. I was in love. It was the late ’90s all over again—that era when I needed a forklift to carry in my Sunday paper.
But it wouldn’t last.
Then came The Denial: Like anyone in love, I was blind to the critics. When Gustavo Arellano blasted the business model and called it unsustainable, I refused to listen. He didn’t understand the OC Register like I did, I told myself.
Heck, my family had an almost 90-year relationships with the Register, going back to the 1920s, when the paper boasted the Santa Ana Register masthead. My grandfather (the former county coroner), my grandmother (the former clerk to the OC County Board of Supervisors), my father (a former Santa Ana Planning Commissioner), and I (a regular trouble-maker for naughty people) have been quoted in the paper for almost a century. A Casteix has been a subscriber (except for two years in the mid-90s) for just as long. No one understood the Register like I did. The OC Register would never hurt me, I said.
My reporter friends were leaving the paper in droves. But I thought: It’s just a phase.
Then when the Register couldn’t deliver papers to subscribers because of millions of dollars in unpaid bills to the Los Angeles Times, I told myself: It will never happen to me.
Next came The Brutal Truth: Two weeks ago, my paper stopped coming. When my neighbor Nadine* asked me if I was getting my Register, I said, “No, but it’s okay. It will come.” It never came. Nadine* began a calling and emailing campaign to get her paper. She and my husband shared ideas about how they could get the attention of the higher-ups and get delivery back. They both looked at me, incredulous: Why was I doing nothing? I love to complain about poor service. I have built a career out of exposing fraud and wrong-doing. But yet, I sat patiently, waiting for a paper (a paper I have already paid for, mind you) that would never come.
Finally, The Betrayal: My husband broke the news gently this morning. “I went to the Smiths* house last night. Steve* said that he and his wife Claire* have been calling and emailing the Register every day for the past three weeks. Now, they get a special delivery of their paper every morning. The carrier even puts the paper on their back porch.”
THE CARRIER GENTLY PLACES THE PAPER ON THEIR BACK PORCH?!
The Smiths live less than 200 ft from my house. The carrier has to pass my driveway to get to them. The carrier also passes right by Nadine’s home. But we get no paper. We get nothing. I wonder if the carrier laughs has he passes my house. I wonder if he even knows that I sit here, lonely and dejected.
Gustavo had been right all along. But like any woman in love, I refused to listen to the voices of reason.
I’d break up with the Register right now, but the customer service hold time is 72 minutes.
So I’m just going to walk over to the Smith’s house and beg to have their NYT Sunday Crossword. I’ll offer a decent wine trade.
*Names have been changed to protect the innocent
-
Bill Cosby, Jerry Brown, and a lawsuit
If I were Bill Cosby, I wouldn’t tweet thank yous to Jill Scott and Whoopi Goldberg. I’d be visiting Sacramento and planting a great big kiss on the lips of California Governor Jerry Brown.
Cosby loves him some Jerry Brown But the good news is that despite Brown’s 2013 veto, there is a lawsuit. A very brave woman named Judy Huth filed her case in Los Angeles County Superior Court, saying that Cosby drugged and raped her at the Playboy mansion when Hutt was only 15 years old. The alleged abuse took place in the 1970s.
The suit, filed by an Orange County attorney, says that Huth CAN use the civil courts, despite the amount of time that has passed since the abuse. According to USA Today:
This is going to be tough to prove. California has some pretty bad precedent when it comes to these kinds of cases, most significantly, the Quarry decision. That ruling, which came down in 2012, said that six brothers abused by an Oakland priest waited too long to file their lawsuits.
Jerry Brown—He loves the Cos Huth is represented by an attorney named Marc Strecker. From what I can gather, Strecker has little to no experience in child sex abuse cases that have to battle civil statutes of limitations. I’m sure that he is a good man and a good attorney, but for Huth’s sake and the sake of hundreds of other older victims, I hope Strecker gets good co-counsel who is well-versed in child sex abuse statute of limitations issues. Going in alone and unarmed will not only destroy Huth’s chances at justice, but it will hurt the entire child sex abuse justice movement in California. (If you’re reading this Marc, I suggest you give me a call)
In other news, Gloria Allred held a press conference yesterday with some of Cosby’s other alleged victims. I am overjoyed that Allred gave them protection and a platform to talk about what happened to them. These women have been shamed into silence for far too long. I can’t even image what they have gone through.
-
What if the parents had no clue?
Amy Berg’s new documentary “An Open Secret” recently had its first (and probably only) public screening. Roger Freedman, writing for Showbiz411 had an honest and evocative review. But it was this paragraph that caught my eye:
The answer is pretty easy: the parents were carefully groomed, enticed by promised of wealth and fame for their children, and led to believe that nothing bad could possibly happen. Their kids weren’t any more gullible or naive than any other kids—they were vulnerable to these rich, powerful adults who used fame, money, threats, and manipulation (or drugs, or alcohol, or grooming, or porn, or whatever) to get these children to do whatever they wanted.
Filmmaker Amy Berg Where were the parents? They were probably doing their rotten best, putting their trust in cunning predators. Parents of victims of clergy, coaches, doctors, scout leaders, and community figures will tell you the same.
The one thing all of these parents were missing were TOOLS to understand grooming, TOOLS to empower their children, and the ability and knowledge to STOP, REPORT, and PREVENT abuse.
I know a great book coming out that can be the first step.
-
When your district says it’s okay for teachers and kids to have sex …
It’s time to find a new district and consider class action.
Because of the way that the civil law evolved through previous court decisions, the LAUSD won the argument, but lost a public relations and educational war.
I could go into a full and complete argument as to why blaming child victims is wrong in the eyes of the law, defies common sense, and gives predatory teachers and school employees a free pass to groom children and teens into child sexual abuse.
But instead, I am going to say this: If you send your child to the LAUSD, reconsider your decision and your tax dollars. If the school district is spending millions on a defense that says it’s okay for teachers to have sex with kids, it’s a BROKEN district. It is engaged in malpractice and child endangerment.
Shameful, indeed.
