Justice May Be Blind, but She's Also Racist

This is a story the other Bros already know, but I thought I'd share it with our enormous readership.

For those thousands of you that don't know me personally, I am currently working construction without a contract.  This means I get paid the day of my labor in cash without tax.  Normally, the work I do involves digging ditches, jackhammering, sanding, painting, stacking lumber, lifting up a very heavy house (using jacks), scraping, and/or picking up and putting down assorted heavy things.  A couple months ago, however, I was assigned a different sort of task:  go out to Gretna and try and get Kyron George out of jail.

Gretna, for those of you unfamiliar with the suburbs surrounding New Orleans, is on the West Bank, which means that it is across the Mississippi River from New Orleans proper.  All you need to know about the West Bank is that it's free to go over there but you have to pay a dollar to get back.  Kyron is a fellow laborer of mine.  He is a 23 year old African-American man with a one year old son, a Graduate Equivalency Diploma, and hypertension.  In the past two years he has been arrested for Grand Theft Auto (a car he was picked up in by a friend), and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute (it was an ounce of weed.  He was going to smoke, not sell.  Drug laws are colossally stupid because they were made by people who didn't do drugs on the advice of people who had no idea what they were talking about).  Kyron doesn't always make great decisions, but he's a good guy and Matt (my employer and friend) and I wanted to help him out of a jam if we could.  Matt told me to go to the courthouse and tell them that Kyron was employed part time and that Matt was willing to withhold some of Kyron's payment to go towards bail.  Simple enough.

I put on a suit and went out to the West Bank, where Kyron was being held in connection with the drug arrest, first thing on a Wednesday morning to make the 9:00 hearing.  By the time I got into the courtroom the defendants were seated.  The defendents consisted of sixteen men on the left side of the room, Kyron included, and three women on the right side.  The sixteen men were put into two rows, eight apiece.   All of the men were in handcuffs, and the handcuffs of the men in each row were attached to a linked steel chain that bound them all together.  So, for those readers that were under the impression that our justice system no longer used chain gangs, you were mistaken.  Demographically, the sixteen men consisted of fourteen black men, one latino man, and one white man.  All three women were white.  They had no chain.

This hearing, probably better referred to as an arraignment, was conducted in a cattle call fashion.  It went like this:  the judge, a dark complected white woman in early middle age, would call out a defendant's name and tell him/her to rise.  They would do so, and she would ask if they had a lawyer.  The defendants invariably said no.  The judge then asked if they had the money to afford a lawyer.  Again, universal nos.  The judge then assigned the defendants to the public defender's office and a young blonde woman who appeared to be in her early 30's sitting to the right of the judge and in front of the male defendants would pipe up and say "Karen Johnson representing the public defender's office and temporarily representing the defendant."  The judge would then ask for a plea and Ms. Johnson would say "not guilty."  The judge would  set a price for bail, then look at the defendant and say "You'll be meeting with your attorney shortly" or something to that affect.  Both women seemed like decent people, but this point in the proceeding was the only time when either of them would actually look at the defendants.

Here's the thing, though:  Kyron's turn didn't go exactly that way.  When it came time to assign his bond, the judge said "Now, you missed your last court date so you'll be held without bail until your trial on April 4th."  It was March 4th.  This came as a surprise.  I was sitting next to Kyron's mother, DeAndra (aka Dee), and she hissed into my ear that he had appeared in court and that this was a load of crap.  I assured her that as soon as the arraignment was over we'd figure out what all this was about.  We were in the middle of this conversation and the last person was being told they'd be meeting their lawyer soon when Kyron collapsed.

As I sort of alluded to earlier, Kyron is an enormous, obese young man.  He's probably 6'3", 320 pounds, so when he fell out of his chair, the seven other defendants he was chained to fell with him.  The reaction of the room was strikingly subdued.  Neither the judge nor the public defender said anything nor did they respond physically.  The families of the other defendants shifted uncomfortably as if we were suddenly at a cocktail party and someone had made an off-color joke.  Not even the defendants dragged to the ground had much to say, except the one white guy, a hick from south Louisiana who complained loudly about how uncomfortable this made his wrists.  All this uncomfortable silence made Dee's screams of "My baby!" and "He's stroking!" more jarring.

After that initial reaction, Dee hustled out of the courtroom and I was left in a tough position:  go console the mother who's just seen her child collapse or stay and see to my friend?  I opted for the latter, at least for the moment.  Kyron was helped back into his chair by his fellow inmates as the two guard looked on.  I went as close to his side as the barrier would allow to ask if he was okay.  I instinctively reached out to him but was told not to touch him by the guards, who made their way between the two of us.  Kyron's head was sort of lolling back and forth, but he grunted when I asked if he wanted me to fetch his mother, so off I went.

I didn't have to go far.  Dee was just outside the courtroom collecting herself with the assistance of Kyron's girlfriend, who'd left the scene with her.  I gave Dee a hug and she stopped crying.  We all three went back into the courtroom to find that the guards had released Kyron from his handcuffs and were talking to one another about what to do next very casually.  With additional give, the inmates had scooted a bit further apart, causing the swamp rat to complain ever more.  He became the centerpiece of a din that also consisted of Dee telling anyone who'd listen that Kyron had hypertension and that she thought he was having a stroke, me telling the guards they ought to do something, and the guards bouncing ideas off each other ("Should we call the medic?  Should we get a wheelchair?") with all the urgency of tossing stones into a lake on a summer's evening.  This whole time, the young Hispanic inmate, whose arms were involuntarily crossed by the taut chain, kept patting the non-verbal Kyron on the shoulder and telling him he'd be alright.  It was a painfully beautiful human gesture, and I might have been the only one who noticed

This lasted about twenty minutes until the guards, a sort of goofy looking white woman and a young black man, finally decided to make the effort to reach for their walkie-talkies and call for a wheelchair.  Ten minutes later a still semi-conscious Kyron was being wheeled out of the room and we were told he was being taken to the jail about a block away.  We rushed over and Kyron's mother insisted he be taken to the nearby hospital for care.  The guard, another tall dark-haired bespectacled goofy looking white woman (there appear to be a lot of these working in the Louisiana penal system), made a phone call and informed us this was not possible but that we needn't worry because they had two registered nurses and one person who was "the same as a doctor."  I tried to stress to her that "the same as a doctor" is not, in fact, the same thing as a doctor and that if indeed Kyron was having a stroke they would be criminally liable.  The guard asked me if I was Mr. George's lawyer, a question I'd also been asked in the courtroom.  I said no and she went back to her Sudoku.

What seemed like hours but was probably only twenty minutes went by.  During that time I met Kyron's former lawyer from the public defender's office.  At least, he thought he had been.  He had no real memory of the case, nor did he seem very interested.  Dee called all of her relatives and sent them into a panic.  She made clear that she intended to call the news if anything happened to her son.  This prompted me to think how good an episode of This American Life this might make when someone came out and told us that Kyron had come to and that, while they intended to keep him under observation for another 24 hours, he appeared to be fine and that he had just fainted.  Relieved, we returned to the courthouse to sort out the matter which had caused Kyron to faint in the first place:  the surprise bonus month he'd been given in the lovely and exotic Jefferson Parish Prison.

Dee, Kyron's girlfriend and I bounced around a few offices and courtrooms until we landed in the waiting room of the judge who had actually rescinded Kyron's eligibility for bail.  During the non-screaming segments of the recent drama, Dee had explained to me why she'd left the courtroom after Kyron collapsed and why his being held without bail was unfounded:

1.  Hysterical black women make bad impressions in courtrooms.
2.  Kyron and his mother had showed up to the court date in question and found he wasn't on the docket.  They were told that he wouldn't be able to appear in front of the judge that day and that they'd send a notice regarding his new court date.  They never received any such notice.

Anyway, the waiting room we were in was a lot like a dentist's office.  There were four chairs, a stand with magazines on it, and a cubicle which contained two clerks of the court, chipper white women in their thirties.  As soon as we walked in, Dee excused herself for the bathroom, so I decided to get the ball rolling.  I approached the window and told the women I was there regarding Kyron George's case.

"Oh, are you his lawyer?" the older of the two women asked.

"I'm a representative of his employer," I responded.

"Oh, he's working?" the same woman asked.

"Yes ma'am," I said.

"Full time?"  she inquired.

"No ma'am.  He's working about 25 hours a week at ten dollars an hour doing construction in the Irish Channel which he'd be happy to put towards bail, but his probation appears to have been withdrawn because he missed a court date.  His mother claims that they never received a notice of that court date."

"Oh, okay,"  she said.  "We'll go ahead and let him out, then.  Brittany," she said, addressing the other clerk, "could you go ahead and draw up a release form for Kyron George effective immediately?"

That was it!  Bear in mind, astonished readers, I had produced no proof of employment, no identification, I HADN'T EVEN TOLD HER MY NAME!  Just then, Dee came back into the waiting room and I told her they were letting Kyron out.  She looked a little dazed, and asked if I was serious.  I told her I was, and that she should probably work out how to best pay bail installments with the clerk.  She told the clerk that she could bring in $300 two days later, and the clerk said that was fine and she just needed to sign the paper Brittany had just printed out.  An hour later, Kyron was released, and Dee insisted on buying me lunch some time, which she later did.

At first glance, these appear to be two largely unrelated stories, one about a morbidly obese man collapsing in a courtroom, and one about an untrained legal wunderkind and they are only tied together by the fact that they happened to me concurrently on the same morning.  But it's better to think of it in terms of how two young men of around the same age are treated based on appearances.  Kyron was being held in prison for holding an amount of marijuana I have held before, as have many of my white friends, and when he collapsed, he was treated with indifference and given terrible medical attention.  I was an anonymous white guy in a suit who was given a prisoner just because I asked.  These stories are best told in tandem to anyone who thinks race isn't an issue in the judicial system.

A Definitive Guide to Next Week on Mad Men

We here at BrOzone Lair have a confession to make: Season 6 of Mad Men is really cooking. So far we've seen Pete Campbell get his turkey basted, Don and Megan playing "A History of Violence," and Stan Rizzo go on a date with the same girl who stood up Mac and Dennis in Season 5 of "It's Always Sunny." Unlike seasons past, things are actually happening, which implies that the big mid-season meltdown could be epic, with the most thrilling incorporation of a '60's historical event to date (Will Sally Draper lose her virginity on the day of Botswana's admittance into the U.N.? Will Harry Crane talk to a girl without stammering during the announcement of the NFL-AFL merger? Will Kevin Holloway drown in his mother's bosom while Toyota rolls out the first Corrolla???).

The only way to know these things for sure is to look into the not-at-all-vague, completely helpful "Next Week on Mad Men" teasers that AMC provides for us. Though it should be completely obvious from this clip, I've broken down for you exactly what will go down in next week's "At The Codfish Ball."

00:07 - Don refuses to let Megan leave their pad until she admits that he kind of looks like Sean Connery

00:10 - Don mumbles something unintelligible in bed while touching that spot on Megan's back that's still sensitive from the eczema outbreak that she told him about five times. You can't just touch her like that--She's not like Betty!

00:12 - Bobby Draper runs frantically into the living room upon realizing that he has shapeshifted into a different boy for the fourth time in five years. 

00:13 - Roger Sterling tells "Shoeless" Joe Jackson about the life-altering experience he had when he got accepted into the Stolichnaya Symphony Orchestra. His LSD has not worn off.

00:14 - Peggy learns that her Safari Movie Handjob Dream Date was actually her boyfriend Abe in disguise. He really does care about her!

00:16 - Sally immediately regrets saying something horribly insensitive to her father's new secretary.

00:18 - Megan reads from her notebook of rap poetry to Don, who disgustedly throws it in the trash. It is discovered by street tough and future hologram Tupac Shakur in 1988.

00:20 - Joan invites Lane into her office to give him a second chance to do what every one in the office has always wanted to do: make out with Joan while kicking Pete Campbell in the throat repeatedly.

There you have it, folks. If, by some strange twist, these things do not occur next week as Matthew Weiner has so clearly laid out above, then I will be back next week with corrections. And remember: Howard Johnson's has 28 more flavors in case you don't like orange; of course they have chocolate.

Free Agency Can Be Funny

Time was that a pro athlete played for one team, essentially throughout his career. Players were grossly underpaid compared to the amount of money they made for their leagues and franchises, but due to baseball's reserve system (and similar systems implemented by other major leagues), they were essentially indentured servants to whichever franchise initially signed them. The only way a player could change teams was if he were traded, like property, or cut--meaning it wasn't super likely another team would jump at the opportunity to sign him. Even as salaries rose slowly through the 1960s and 70s, players' ability to actually exert any leverage in contract negotiations continued to be severely limited by the reserve system. As Curt Flood famously put it, "a well paid slave is a slave nonetheless." (or something like that)

I'm not here to defend that system. It was terrible, exploitative, and from a labor and fairness perspective the current system of free agency and frequent player movement is much better. Pro sports now strike a balance--long-term contracts and initial waiting periods prior to free agency eligibility mean teams aren't in constant, chaotic flux despite the fact that every player who lasts long enough does eventually have the right to test the market waters. The one thing the old world had going for it, though, was from the perspective of fans. Imagine if Yankee fans had to sit on pins and needles wondering whether Mantle would choose to come back to them in the prime of his career. As notoriously cheap as the franchise was back then, the likelihood is that Mantle would've finished his career elsewhere. His entire legacy would be different. (He also would have been paid more fairly, but that's not the point for now). Albert Pujols, on the other hand, turned down a ridiculously huge offer in 2011 to finish his career in St. Louis in order to accept a way more ridiculously huge offer to play for the Angels. We Cards fans had to watch the face of the team walk away from us.

That's life in today's pro sports. It's a business, and as much as we would like the players to care about the teams as much as we do, we know deep down that they just can't. Don't get me wrong--I think they want to win more than we want them to win. It's just that they want to win because winning is cool and losing sucks; in most cases they don't want to win "for St. Louis" or "for New Orleans." They want to win for the sake of winning, no matter what their jerseys say. I'm sure the guys on the 2004 Red Sox thought it was cool to be the team that broke the Curse, and I'm sure the 2187 Cubs will feel the same way. But in general I think the point holds.

However, there is one entertaining, maybe even funny, unintended result of free player movement in pro sports: when guys who are connected by a single play when they opposed each other on a big stage end up sharing a locker room. This past offseason happens to have brought together two different pairs of dudes who were part of two of my favorite plays in sports history. Let's start with football.

Peyton Manning and Tracy Porter are now teammates. The interesting thing about this is that they now play for a team that was not involved in the Play That Connects Them:

As quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts, driving to try and tie the Super Bowl in the fourth quarter, Peyton Manning threw a quick slant to a cutting Reggie Wayne. Except Reggie Wayne didn't cut, Tracy Porter picked it off, and Hell froze over (i.e. the Saints won the Super Bowl). It. Was. Amazing. Like most Saints fans, I can't think of Porter or Manning without reliving this glorious moment in my head.

Now they're both in Denver, both of their own accord through free agent signings. How did that first day as teammates go? How will every day as teammates go? As mentioned above, while these guys probably lack the passion of fans, clearly they are competitive as all get-out. How is Peyton going to enjoy being reminded of the biggest interception of his career every time he looks up from his locker and sees Porter putting on the same uniform? How much crap is it ok for porter to give him about that play? Locker rooms are notorious for their pranks--will Porter force a rookie to play the above YouTube clip on the locker room flat screen every time Manning walks into the room? Wear his Super Bowl t-shirt to work every day? The possibilities are endless.

A similar phenomenon has taken place in baseball. My beloved Cardinals picked up Carlos Beltran in the offseason. I couldn't find good video of it, but his new teammate Adam Wainwright--after years of being an ace starter--is still The Guy Who Struck Out Beltran. In Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS, with Wainwright in the closer's role, Beltran came to the plate in the bottom of the 9th with a chance to extend the game or even win it for the Mets. This was the same guy who, in a Houston uniform, had destroyed the Cardinals two years earlier. But Wainwright made Beltran's knees buckle with an absolutely sick curveball. Now they're both wearing Cardinal Red.

I DID find this video from 2012 spring training:

I really, really hope Wainy threw a 12-to-6 dropper to start the practice session. And then winked. And then elaborately took off his 2006 World Series ring before continuing to pitch.

A guy can hope.

Connected at the Follicles

Since he first emerged as a solo artist in 2002, my sole exposure to Ben Kweller was relegated to backseats of cars in high school and the rare occasion when my girlfriend would put on a song of his on a long road trip. From what I could tell, his songs were tight, charming, and catchier than Ozzie Smith in 1994, which would seem like a perfect match for my love of toothache pop and shaggy roustabouts. I just never really paid much attention to him personally because his first album featured a precocious-looking boy (Kweller at 20 years old) with chipmunk cheeks brushing his teeth, and that sight threatened to blow my cute fuse.

This past Saturday, I watched that same precocious ragamuffin put down the toothbrush and pick up a six string for a concert at Lincoln Hall. After a brief pandering to the delighted Chicago audience, Kweller and his bandmates kicked things off with the crunchy, Fountains of Wayne-aping "Mean to Me," and though the lighting was dim (possibly to hide any signs of aging on the forever-boy-rocker's face), I could see that Kweller's new longer, wavy locks bore a stunning resemblance to those of another young, prodigiously talented singer of a much more aggressive variety: the late, brilliant, punk goliath Jay Reatard.

I saw Reatard at his last Austin, TX show in 2009 while he was promoting what would be his final album, "Watch Me Fall." That show was certainly a different beast from Kweller's intimate, inviting set on Saturday night. Whereas Kweller performed at the new Lincoln Hall in all its perfect-sounding glory, Reatard's show was at Emo's, the legendary punk club with legendarily awful sound. Kweller's hour-long set was interspersed with charming anecdotes about his attempts to quit smoking and how much he missed his wife and children; Reatard broke the sound barrier by playing nearly twenty songs in his forty-minute performance, saying nary a word during breaks. Kweller proved himself to be the ultimate good sport, having friendly back-and-forth banter with his fans and returning promptly for an encore during which he played one of his biggest hits, "Wasted and Ready;" Reatard's set ended with two fans throwing firecrackers on the ground, running onstage, and trying to punch Reatard in the face while he fought them off with the mike stand and eventually left the stage with his middle fingers raised. It was the very coolest.

You may wonder what, aside from their hair, the two guys in these pictures have in common. Quick answer: gnarly Gibson guitars. Real answer: they represent a fascinating case study in the "Nature vs. Nurture" debate. Kweller and Reatard were born within a year of each other ('80 and '81, respectively) and grew up in Southern towns with exposure to music at very early ages. They both released their first albums when they were fifteen years old and both tinkered around with several bands and side projects before achieving great acclaim with solo debuts that each had iconic covers.

If those covers weren't clear enough evidence, Reatard has a much darker worldview than Kweller (Sample Kweller lyric: "I'm in love with someone who's as pretty as a flower;" Sample Reatard lyric: "To me, you see, you always were a cunt.") Both singers have world-class ears for melodies and hooks, but they're utilized in entirely different ways. Kweller surrounds his quirky observations of teenage angst and young adulthood with either sparse guitars and pianos or crisply arranged rock and roll. Reatard, however, sings almost exclusively about the failures of society or the human body to the accompaniment of crashing cymbals and mega-fuzzed guitar or in-the-red new wave synths and disembodying reverb. While Ben Kweller is constantly inviting his audience into his wonderful world through clean vocals and lyrics rife with details from his personal life, Reatard seems to be searching for a way to alienate himself from his audience by hiding behind a goofy voice and sedimentary layers of distortion. And by punching them in the face.

It's entirely possible that these discrepancies in style can be attributed simply to the fact that people have different tastes, but I think this has more to do with their respective upbringings and lifestyles. Kweller was born in San Francisco, but grew up in the sleepy town of Greenville, TX, of which he is a "Notable resident and native," according to Wikipedia. Kweller's father, the first doctor in the history of Greenville, taught him how to drum and play guitar at age three . Kweller then began to write songs of his own and pursue them professionally from the time that he was eight. By fifteen, Kweller and his friends from school formed a nationally recognized buzz band, Radish, whose first album was recorded and released by Mercury Records. By twenty he had moved to Brooklyn and gotten married. He has two kids who are both unsettlingly precious, and all-in-all seems to be a pretty together guy.

Reatard (Born James Lindsey) grew up in North Memphis, which is the setting of the recent documentary tour de force Undefeated and is notable for being a tourist destination for those who can't afford to visit Haiti but would like to see a place of equal societal disarray. In the film Better than Something, Reatard describes falling asleep to the sound of police sirens and gunshots. He gets his unfortunate nom de plume from the fact that his grandmother ran a home for adults with intellectual disabilities and his only friends growing up were the 40-year-old women who lived there. By the age of fifteen, Reatard had also recorded his first album, but not before dropping out of school. Also, that album was recorded in his bedroom and the drums consisted of Reatard banging on a bucket by himself [full disclosure: this is not a very good album].

I'm not saying necessarily that privilege automatically makes you sweet and sunny, nor that a childhood in poverty makes you into a bitter, cynical punk rock misanthrope. However, there is a sort of confidence that comes from growing up comfortably. To wit, The Strokes won our hearts back in 2001 because of their cockiness and brash nonchalance about success; this nonchalance and high self-evaluation came from growing up with guys like fashion mogul John Casablancas as your father. Initially, that charm wore off as The Strokes took years off at a time and then released records that appeared to be written and recorded in a week's time because The Strokes never needed to be work hard to be successful.

Fortunately, Kweller doesn't seem to be going that route. Since his critically acclaimed debut in 2001, he's been diligently putting out workmanlike albums of the exact same quality every couple of years, touring behind them, and then spending the rest of his time with his family. While he may change up the instrumentation from time to time (adding a pedal steel on Changing Horses, adding the occasional strings on Ben Kweller), he doesn't seem to be interested in putting out anything dramatically different than what he's done before. But that's ok; he doesn't need to. Kweller writes a specific type of song that very few others can pull off with sincerity, so he’s made a career of doing just that. However, it seems that spending time with his family is now much more important than breaking barriers artistically, which probably was never one of his goals in the first place.

Reatard, on the other hand, left behind an impenetrably large discography for such a short career. In interviews he claimed to write songs every day and record them every week. In 2010, he put out a new single for Matador every month, and was constantly changing his style, eventually even experimenting with psychedelia, folk, and calypso. This kind of drive can only come from a man who has little else going in his life, who needed with every fiber in his being to be constantly creating new music. He talks in Better than Something about wanting to be able to buy his mother a new house--not a big one, just something in a neighborhood with fewer gangs. It was unlikely that Reatard would ever have been a huge success commercially, but the fact that he had to think that way was clearly what drove him to create such angry, vital work.

Ben Kweller probably won't ever write anything as visceral as Reatard's "My Shadow," or as epic as his "Always Wanting More," but he'll always be able to cook up a fresh batch of perfect pop, and it seems like he's got a pretty fantastic life. For that, I respect the hell out of the guy, and not just because he has fantastic, flowing rock-star locks.