I am assuming this is real and not a staged prank. Assuming it’s real, I am sympathetic with Mr. Jordan.

Unlike some, I am not fazed at the use of a gun. Not only am I one of those who believes the right to keep and bear arms is sacred, but it would have been more disturbing had he used a hammer or run over the laptop with a car. The gun is a distraction at most, although I certainly hope Mr. Jordan has taught his children proper use and respect for that fine firearm of his.

Nevertheless, however justified Mr. Jordan’s anger may be, if he’s wise he will take down this video and apologize–yes, apologize–to his daughter.

I suppose he may get angry at that suggestion, and I’m sure some of you reading this will also be angry. Certainly a lot of people, including some teenagers, are cheering this whole thing. But when tempers cool, here are some things to contemplate:

1) This teaches your child that destruction of valuable property is an appropriate way to express anger.

2) It also teaches your child that if you’re angry, you should retaliate–and retaliate not just in a moment of unthinking anger, but in a cold, calculating, planned manner.

3) The level of public attention this has received now vastly exceeds the level of the offense. Mr. Jordan almost certainly did not intend that, but that has been the result, raising this from teenage misbehavior to International Incident. (I know that was not the intent, but it’s what happened. Whoops.)

4) Teenagers can be selfish and lazy and bratty, but Mr. Jordan may wish to contemplate that there are millions of rebellious teens who do things like get pregnant, use drugs, get involved in crime, run away from home, even wind up in jail or commit suicide. None of those are funny, all of them are real, and they happen to parents of every race, religion, income level, and every part of the country (and world).

Mister Jordan spends much time berating his daughter for how good she has it. In this, he is right. But he may also want to thank God that his problems with his daughter amount to no more than whining about chores, some foul language, and complaining about what awful parents she has. Your girl could be strung out on drugs, pregnant, or in jail Mr. Jordan–maybe all three. Or just dead. And if you think I’m joking, give me a call and I’ll introduce you to some people I know who have had those very things happen to them. You and that girl’s mom need to get some perspective here, because you could have things a lot worse too, and I doubt you’d trade a whole warehouse full of laptops for that little girl.

Now here’s the funny thing: I might have done something very similar to this. I don’t think publicly embarrassing a teenager who’s done something like this is beyond the pale. But as a parent you need to be a little more creative. If my teenager had done something like this, and I was going to post a YouTube video like this, here’s what I would do:

1) Everything you said about how hard you had to work when you were a kid? Good. I’d say that. I left home at 15 and had my first job before that myself. Go ahead and say those things. But you don’t call the kid names or call her lazy. You just make the point of how easy she has it by comparison, and how hurtful it is to have her take that for granted.

2) All that stuff about the “cleaning lady?” I’d say every word of that the same, but I’d also add some extra: she gets to spend the next few weekends at the “cleaning lady’s” house helping her fix up her house. Try doing some cooking and cleaning and even some yard work for that “cleaning lady” and maybe she’ll learn a little more respect for people who are having hard times, and that you don’t treat that with contempt.

3) The laptop? I’d show myself on camera carefully putting it in a box, taking it to the post office, and mailing it to these people, or some other charity. Then I’d tell her if she wants another laptop, she can have it when she buys it for herself.

That would have been funny, it would have embarrassed her without frightening or humiliating her, and it would have illustrated the difference between a temper tantrum and reasonable consequences for bad behavior.

Seriously Mr. Jordan: I would go to your daughter, hug her, explain to her that what she did was wrong but that what you did was not the right way to respond to it. You should not be afraid to tell your child when you’re in the wrong. Then, I would work on a better relationship. Most definitely, I would keep in mind that kids may be selfish and unappreciative, but that’s a pretty normal thing: just about every parent of a teenager puts up with that. But you probably want to be more creative and thoughtful in your responses to it in the future.

(This item cross-posted to Dean’s World.)

From the Wall Street Journal:

Citing his combative style and personal life, many women in Florida say they won’t support Newt Gingrich in the Republican primary. That gender gap has allowed Mitt Romney to open a commanding lead in Florida over the former Speaker, WSJ’s Neil Hickey reports.

This WSJ report covers why, very specifically, the women going for Newt thing in South Carolina won’t happen in Florida:

Cross-posted from Writes Like She Talks.

In her column, she writes about Gingrich’s marital history and conservative voters:

“When all else fails, they have even been known to argue that everybody does it. ‘I’m just saying, they all have stinky feet,’ former Congressman J. C. Watts, a Baptist preacher, said while he was campaigning for Newt in South Carolina.

“Although actually, when you’re talking about 1) Committing adultery, 2) Divorcing your wife while she’s sick to marry your mistress, 3) Committing adultery, 4) Allegedly asking your wife to let you keep the mistress on the side and 5) Divorcing your wife while she’s sick to marry your mistress… it’s pretty clear everybody doesn’t do it.

“But in a way, Watts is right. (And we do like that stinky feet line.)”

Flashback to the campaign in 2007 when Mrs. Obama told Glamour Magazine about her two little girls: “We have this ritual in the morning. They come in my bed, and Dad isn’t there–because he’s too snore-y and stinky, they don’t want to ever get into bed with him…

“He still has trouble…putting his socks actually in the dirty clothes.”

Of course, the irony of Watts’ translating the phrase from a close, happy family to defend a serial adulterer is, to say the least, piquant.

Rooting around in my five-year-old blog posts, there is one several days later about Newt Gingrich explaining why he won’t run for the White House…

MORE.

Former Congressman, Speaker of the House and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich won the female vote in South Carolina, according to exit polls and despite reports to the contrary, just the day before, of a significant gender gap that should have helped former Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney, if it really existed — which it appears it did not.

And why not? Shouldn’t Romney had had the women in his column? I wasn’t the only one thinking it.

For one thing, former first lady of South Carolina, Jenny Sanford, who knows a few things about politicians who cheat on their wives with mistresses with whom they get together after a divorce, spoke out very pointedly against Gingrich’s character just before the primary on MSNBC’s Hardball. How could that not have carried some weight with conservative female voters in South Carolina?

Then, the governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley — endorsed and supported in her 2010 race by both Jenny Sanford and Sarah Palin — in turn endorsed Romney over a month ago. Note though that one of the most popular S.C. blogs indicates that Haley’s approval might have been more of a hindrance than a help.

As for Palin, she and the former first dude, Todd Palin, have indicated — directly or indirectly — support for Gingrich recently. So women who watch women are getting a decidedly mixed message.

Personally, I don’t get it either in regard to the women, but I’d like to see the gender breakdown, if we can, in that voter turnout: Who exactly turned out within the record numbers? Could be grasping at straws, at but maybe BlogHer Red Dirt Kelly was on to something when she wrote, “Mitt Romney’s Debate Conduct Makes Me Feel Icky.” I feel that way when I hear Gingrich, but I don’t really count in these things since I’m totally not the audience the conservatives are trying to attract.

You can read my full wrap-up post here with a lot of other links of interest here.

A Sikh ready for the holy bath at Golden Temple in Amritsar in northern India.

Ever heard of a place where you can enjoy live Western classical music round-the-clock? Perhaps there is none. However, if you are interested in attending a non-stop Indian classical music concert round the year, then the place to visit is the Golden Temple (or Harmandir Sahib) at Amritsar in northern India. This place is the rallying point of the followers of Sikh religion worldwide. Music wafts across with different musicians (Ragis) taking turn to sing … The acoustics are superb and BOSE speakers dot the huge complex.

The total number of Ragas (melodic modes) used in Sri Guru Granth Sahib is 31. At the temple, one can feel the atmosphere charged with a remarkable sense of service and humanity. A huge constant flow of people, nearly 100,000 every day and night, offer prayers at the sanctum sanctorum and partake free food at the Golden Temple complex. It is a unique sight, and experience, not seen anywhere else in the world.

One can lounge anywhere in the area surrounding the Darbar Sahib (the sanctum sanctorum) and the Sarovar (the pond). We enjoyed the Kirtans/Ragas from different spots…even right inside the Darbar Sahib where the holy Guru Granth Sahib is kept (and where you can also see the Ragis), and also from the first and second floor of the sanctum sanctorum.

The generous use of gold at Darbar Sahib is well-known in the world (donated by Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab/Lahore). The floral and decorative art work on the walls, domes and doors is exquisite. No deity or human form … but the best from the Hindu and the Islamic art has been displayed.

On the second floor of the sanctum sanctorum, I could see an inscription in Urdu on one side of the marble floor. I asked those present if anyone knew Urdu so that I could understand the meaning. No one knew this exquisite language (once the language of undivided India’s elite class) that is now becoming extinct.

Later I learnt that most of the art work was done by Muslim artisans, mainly from Agra (home to the Taj Mahal). Many well-known Muslim musicians used to sing kirtans at the Golden Temple before India got divided and Pakistan came into being in 1947. The highly universal and accommodating nature of the Sikh faith is reflected in the Guru Granth Sahib, as also the Golden Temple and other gurdwaras.

In many cities of the world I have seen newly-arrived Pakistanis and others enjoying free board and lodging for days at the gurdwaras.

Every state in India has thousands of holy places and temples belonging to different religions. They have their magnetic pull and beauty. I visit only a few selected ones. I am not exactly excited at the thought of visiting religious places because of the general confusion, noise and lack of sense of cleanliness and hygiene… …

My visit to the Golden Temple was an eye-opener … Such devotion, cleanliness, good free food, music, peace and tranquility. And with no one in particular enforcing order or discipline!!!

Who will win? It could depend on who votes — men or women — and where they live — the Upstate or coast.

“It may be very close,” Matt Moore, executive director of the S.C. Republican Party, said Friday.

Polling shows Gingrich and Romney running neck and neck. But it also shows a gender divide between the two front-runners, sources in the Romney campaign said Friday. Women voters are breaking for Romney and men for Gingrich, they said.

Frankly, I’ve been wondering when the heck someone was going to write about this so I’m glad to see it noted.

Now remember – the gender gap can exist and often is used to refer to the gap between how men and women vote for a single candidate (men really like Gingrich but women don’t). But the gap between how women vote for Romney and not for Gingrich also affects the outcome.

Read the full post at Writes Like She Talks.

Here’s the full list of 50 from Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook:

FIRST LOOK – GQ’s “The 50 Most Powerful People in Washington (People with the last names Obama and Biden not included,” by Reid Cherlin, Rob Fischer, Jason Horowitz and Jason Zengerle: 1) Eric Cantor 2) Mitch McConnell 3) David Plouffe 4) Leon Panetta 5) Hillary Clinton 6) Ben Bernanke 7) David Petraeus Kevin McCarthy 9) Pete Rouse 10) U.S. Chamber’s Tom Donohue 11) Tim Geithner 12) John Boehner 13) Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie, Steven Law (American Crossroads) 14) Tommy Boggs, chairman, Patton Boggs 15) Dan Pfeiffer 16) Gene Sperling and Jack Lew 17) Chuck Schumer 18) Grover Norquist 19) Chuck Todd 20) Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser and speechwriter, and brother David Rhodes, president of CBS News 21) Paul Ryan 22) Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough 23) Heather and Tony Podesta 24) Chris Van Hollen 25) Paul Clement, partner, Bancroft

26) Jim DeMint 27) White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler 28) Joe Pounder, RNC research director 29) Rep. Tim Scott 30) White House Personnel Director Nancy Hogan 31) Brian Deese, deputy director, White House National Economic Council 32) Education Secretary Arne Duncan 33) Jake Sullivan, State Department director of policy planning 34) Ezra Klein 35) White House Director of Legislative Affairs Rob Nabors 36) Bill Daley 37) Patty Murray 38) Capital Weather Gang bloggers 39) Liz Cheney 40) Mike Allen 41) restaurateur José Andrés 42) party planners Jayne Sandman, Barbara Martin, Svetlana Legetic 43) Marco Rubio 44) White House Social Secretary Jeremy Bernard 45) Charles Krauthammer 46) MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd 47) Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg 48) Jack Quinn 49) restaurateur James Alefantis, owner of Comet Ping Pong, Buck’s Fishing & Camping 50) Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine, owners, Politics & Prose.

Pathetic. Not even necessarily on GQ although I’d levy that claim without much sweat. But pathetic re: those who can appoint, who can make power and influence reside in whomever they choose.

And the number of women in the second half doubles primarily because three women party plan together.

Sigh.

The Ginsberg video should go in everyone’s sidebar until we get better numbers on these things.

Cross-posted from Writes Like She Talks.

Sixty-five years ago today, a 22-year-old beauty by the name of Elizabeth Short was found brutally slain in a vacant lot at 39th and Norton streets in Los Angeles. Her body was cut in half at the waist with surgical precision, her face and breasts slit, and there was a large gash where her vulva should have been. She had been drained of fluids as if prepared for an embalming and she was left in a garish pose, her head turned to the side and one arm above her body.

The case became known as the Black Dahlia Murder because Betty, as the wannabe actress liked to be called, wore her hair and clothes black.

The lurid crime shook Angelenos usually inured to the rampant crime in their midst, and a huge team of detectives was assigned to track down the perpetrator. Many suspects were pursued, but all were released and the case technically remains unsolved.

I’m somewhat of an armchair expert on the Black Dahlia Murder and have looked pretty deeply into it in connection with research on another brutual murder for my true-crime book, The Bottom of the Fox, that also does not lack for suspects and hasn’t been solved.

I was involved in many homicide cases during a long newspaper career, and you haven’t really lived until you’ve stood in a morgue and watched a coroner in a white lab coat open one of those stainless steel drawers and slide out a sheet-covered corpse. Yup, just like in the movies. I also have read dozens of criminology and forensic texts and true-crime books in order to steep myself in investigative methodology and police jargon for my own tome.

Steve Hodel’s Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius For Murder was the best of the true-crime books I read, although it may be the least well written.

As for literary pretension, it certainly cannot be compared to the Black Dahlia, the first of the novels in James Ellroy’s acclaimed “L.A. Quartet” and the book on which The Black Dahlia, director Brian De Palma’s 2006 bomb, was based. But Hodel’s Black Dahlia Avenger is in its own way an extraordinary stemwinder.

Here’s the story:

Hodel was a career Los Angeles Police Department detective and a model of the good cop. He was retired in 1999 when Dr. George Hodel, the brilliant but troubled father from whom he had been estranged for most of his adult life, died at age 91.

Included in his father’s personal effects was a small palm-sized photograph album. The doctor’s wife — the last of four — thought that the son should have it.

Among the photos were Hodel as a child on his father’s knee, Hodel’s mother and two photos of a young Eurasian woman that Hodel, to his horror, recognized as Kiyo, his own former wife. Yet Kiyo is much younger in the photos than Hodel ever saw her and can only be a Kiyo whom his own father had known years earlier.

The mystery deepens when Hodel looks at two photos of another young woman — a white woman with two flowers in her black hair, her eyes cast down. He wonders if she was asleep when the photos were taken. Or dead.

Hodel is struck by the face but can’t remember why until he later realizes to his shock that the flowers are dahlias and the woman could be . . . you guessed it, Elizabeth Short.

George Hodel was tall, dark, suave, handsome and a connoisseur of fine art and women. He also was an abortionist and a devotee of the Marquis de Sade and Jack the Ripper.

He ran orgies in Steve Hodel’s boyhood home frequented by avant-garde artist and photographer Man Ray, legendary film directors John Huston (who previously had been married to George Hodel) and Orson Welles, among other notables. One orgy involved the gang rape of Steve Hodel’s older half sister, Tamar. George beat the rape rap because he told the LAPD that Tamar had made the whole thing up. Investigators were notably uncurious about whether the well known doctor was lying.

Despite a lack of physical evidence, which was destroyed by bumbling and corrupt detectives trying to cover up an unrelated conspiracy involving crooked pols and gangsters and a number of notes possibly written by the murderer to throw them off the trail, Steve Hodel began working on the Black Dahlia case.

I am not spoiling the book by stating the obvious — that the son came to believe that his father, acting out his obsession with De Sade and The Ripper, murdered Betty Short (who is shown atop this post with an autopsy photo superimposed). There also are intriguing indications that Welles may have been an accomplice, although Steve Hodel does not go there in his book.

Welles’s alleged involvement is circumstantial but intriguing: Production of The Lady From Shanghai, the movie he was making, shut down on the day Short was murdered, the way she was mutilated is uncannily like that of a woman in The Lady, Short’s body was found on a vacant lot once used by Welles’s The Mercury Wonder Show, a circus in which he famously sawed a woman in half, Welles took out a passport a few days later, Short wrote in her diary of dining with a man called “George” (Welles’s first name) at a restaurant he frequented, and most bizarrely of all, a few days before the murder he had applied to register as an assistant with a local mortuary.

Hodel tells The Moderate Voice that he will be publishing a sequel to Black Dahlia Avenger later this winter.

Here are the comments at my Facebook thread and many times more can be found at former Plain Dealer journalist Connie Schultz’s (aka Pulitzer Prize winner and US Senator Sherrod Brown’s wife).

Multiple folks in the news biz indicate that no other papers appear to have pulled it but I have not corroborated that. The PD’s Ted Diadiun, the reader rep, says he was receiving a lot of comments but mostly people thinking the paper should have let it run (that was from earlier today).

So – go look and then come back and tell – what did you think? Should the PD have let it run?

Cross-posted from Writes Like She Talks.

Asked by a New Hampshire man who was being foreclosed by Bank of America even though he had made all his mortgage payments, a problem Romney has clearly never faced, the candidate suggested he go to court or occupy bank headquarters until he gets satisfaction.

“That would get their attention,” Romney said.

Problem is, neither the Governor or his staff has been paying enough attention to the news, having missed a widely spread story of a Florida couple who did just that last summer and, accompanied by Sheriff’s deputies and movers, went with court permission to remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and cash in the teller’s drawers, before the bank finally anted up what it owed them.

Oh well, never mind, it’s the thought that counts. And a Merry Christmas to all!

Cross-posted from my blog.

To offer a more local example, I live near the community of Lodi, California. For many years Lodi was known by police across the country as being one of the safest places to live, virtually crime free. While the local police did a good job that was not the main reason for the lack of crime.

The safety of Lodi was due to the fact that it was where the leaders of the west coast branch of organized crime sent their families to live.

As you might imagine once this became well known few criminals wanted to operate in the area. The chance that the little old lady you mugged might be the grandmother of a mob boss tended to convince you to avoid being within 20 miles of the community. At the same time the mob considered Lodi neutral ground and did nothing to harm anyone there.

Then the law did just what it was supposed to do, it brought down the mob and sent many of the leaders to prison. As a result the protection that Lodi had was no longer in place. Now I am obviously glad that they got rid of the mob but the fact is that it had unintended consequences.

Although on a different level, the same thing happened to crime in a lot of areas of the country. I am no fan of crime but at least the mob did keep it ‘organized’. Activities were restricted to certain parts of town and things like drug dealing were generally frowned upon.

Today the gangs run the crime world and it is pretty much anything goes. Obviously I’d love to have a world without crime, but since that is unlikely, I sometimes find myself nostalgic for the ‘good old days’.

The point of the story is that the same thing has been happening in the international community and in some ways we may be similarly nostalgic for something we never really liked.

Growing up as a child of the 1980′s I shared something with my parents and my grandparents, the fear of the Soviet Union. They were the bad guys and we worried about what they might do. It wasn’t just something from a James Bond movie, there was a real concern about them. Living in a primary target city I knew that if the worse thing came to pass then I was doomed.

But at the same time there was a certain level of security. While there were still terrorists out there they were frequently kept in check by the US and the USSR. In short we had ‘our bad guys’ and ‘their bad guys’ and neither side let them go too far.

Even the fear of war was more of a theory than anything else. Deep down we knew it could happen but wa also knew that both sides were reasonably rational. As Dr. Falken pointed out in the classic 80′s film War Games ‘It just doesn’t make sense’.

Today we no longer have to fear the Soviets but we do have to worry about dozens of other threats, often from people who are far less rational than the most unstable Soviet or American leader from the Cold War.

It kind of makes you wonder what will happen if we manage to win the war on terror.

But I also discovered I could do things that I had only dreamed of in the darkroom.  I could isolate parts of the picture and edit them:

I could also turn day into night – the original of the picture below was a black and white picture taken during the day.  It was a very nice picture except for a very boring sky.

The boring sky was replaced with a moon and the scene changed from light to dark.

Digital photography does have a downside – it’s too easy.  Since I got my first digital SLR about six years ago I am taking more pictures than ever.  I also find I’m am taking fewer good ones.  A large format camera on a tripod required some discipline – you were more likely to look for a photograph.  Thank God for those old slides and negatives.

More pictures can be found here.

Eddie Joubert’s midlife crisis had arrived right on schedule. He fell hard for the Poconos, a resort area in Pennsylvania where he bought a rundown tavern that became a magnet for an eclectic clientele that ranged from world-class jazz musicians to bikers to returning Vietnam War veterans. But the Poconos held a dark secret. When Joubert was hacked to death in 1981, it was yet another in a series of gruesome unsolved murders and puzzling deaths involving hippies, gays and other people whom the authorities cared little about because they were considered to be lowlifes.

The Bottom of the Fox lays bare that secret for the first time. It details the astonishing level of violence in an area known for resorts and verdant woodlands while revealing how evil doers could literally get away with murder.

Order a copy through Amazon USA here. The Kindle edition also is available through Amazon in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Whenever I think of the attack I am reminded of one of the more impressive stories of the day. At the time the attack began ships all over the harbor were in the process of rendering the colors for the day. On the USS Nevada the ship’s band had gathered on the deck to play the national anthem

They were just starting to play when the attack began, and every normal human instinct would be to run. After all they were standing there on an open deck with planes strafing targets all over the harbor.

But that is not what happened. For the men of the Nevada (and indeed for the men of every ship in the harbor) once you began playing the anthem you did not stop. You continued to play until it was over and if you were not playing you were standing at attention.

To be fair it was, according to witnesses, one of the fastest versions ever played, but they finished before breaking for cover.

Nearby more than 1,000 men of the USS Arizona barely had time to respond to the fight before they were struck down in a deadly inferno.

On other ships, men in flooding compartments remained at their stations because they knew doing so would save the lives of others, or would keep the weapons firing.

Pilots on the ground raced through enemy fire to reach their planes in an attempt to offer some defense for those on the ground.

One man stood his ground and continued to fire on the enemy despite being wounded repeatedly.

These are obviously but a few of many stories of bravery on that December day, and indeed as we remember the heroes of 1941 we should not forget the heroes of 2011.

The key of course being that we always remember.

[A] new study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, finds that it’s not all bad for American leaders. By comparing presidents to other men of their eras, researchers discovered that commanders in chief die at about the same age as their peers. They certainly don’t age at double the speed [as was suggested by one physician]. Many live longer, probably because most have been wealthy, college-educated, and able to get good medical care. So why does being in office wrinkle presidents? Probably, the researchers say, because they’re just getting older like the rest of us.

These dishes have become great cold-weather favorites of ours and while labor intensive they are relatively easy to prepare, make for great leftovers and can be frozen. I have customized the recipes for these dishes to more closely suit our tastes, and it helps (as well as keeps down costs) that we grow our own herbs.

Click here to read more.

A year ago I published a list of my 30 most influential books, which I expand to 35 here (actually 36 because one new title bumps an old one from the list) with the latest additions noted with an asterisk. All of these books are available through online retailers and for free through the Inter Library Loan service of which most larger public libraries are a member.

Click here to read more.

My wife, Kimberly Webb Joyner, died this morning in her sleep from unknown causes. She was 41.

She leaves behind two little girls she loved more than anything, Katie, who turns 3 on New Year’s Eve, and Ellie, who was born June 21.

We met in August 2004 and were married on October 8, 2005. She had just turned 35 and I was a few weeks shy of 40 but neither of us had been married before. We shared religious and political worldviews but very different personalities. She was extroverted, sunny, and patient to my introverted, grumpy, and antsy. I almost certainly got the better of that bargain.

Kim was my partner, helpmate, and confidante. Her passing leaves a gaping hole in my life.