Posted on
January 24, 2008 in
I was driving down 19th Street in the pouring rain this evening when I saw a young man in a flannel shirt crossing the street — about a block up. He had the sort of odd gait that I associate, for some reason, with brain damage. He started giving the finger to passing cars. As I got closer, I waved to him. He started angrily giving me both fingers. I waved some more, and we slowly passed each other by, he emphatically flipping me off and I smiling like a friendly idiot and waving.
Given the repeated and increasingly emphatic gestures often associated with driving in Houston, are you sure that he wasn’t simply continuing on his way to a destination his car couldn’t reach but gesturing nonetheless?
So, let me get you to confirm or deny my theory:
After writing a semi-nice article about Victor Jay Wisner (Street Name: Vic) yesterday, you feel dirty inside, thus making you write two mean ones about the office today?
Leviathan:
No, I think I just found AHCL’s anonymous commenter
AHCL:
Semi-nice?
Mean?
Waaaaaahhhh, mine hurts too.
I always feel dirty inside; I like it.
So maybe the title of this post was a little harsh, and I probably pushed the inanity a little too hard in the other one.
But otherwise it’s nothing but the truth. The employees of the Harris County DA’s Office are getting a much-needed sense of perspective from this adventure. The good news is that it’ll make most of them better human beings and better prosecutors.
Hi, Mark- How are you doing?
Your actions sound like a possibly mocking variation on the theme of Bodhissatva Never Despise, who would bow to everyone’s Buddha-becoming potential. I write about BND here:
https://tinyurl.com/3479ee . Take care. Jon
Hi, Jon. Thanks for the comment and the link, which I’d seen before.
I didn’t intend to mock.
Mark, this type of commentary from you and the media do not serve to make individual prosecutors ‘”better human beings or better prosecutors.” They make us want to quit the job we have held for years. We are over worked, under appreciated, and under paid. Many of us are at our breaking point right now. We are being called racist and unethical. A post like this one was unnecessary. I do not defend Chuck or his actions, but cut the rest of us a break. We were never consulted by Chuck before he took the actions he did.
For over a decade, I was proud to be a DA. My job was filled with honor, honesty, fairness and knowing I always do what is just to the best of my ability. Yes, it is largely a thankless job, but now I have to wonder how much longer I can watch my friends and coworkers suffer for the actions of one or a few. You truly have no idea how stressful this has been on the worker bees at the office. I think if you knew how much anxiety this has caused over 200 ADAs, you would think twice before blasting us for no reason.
I did not need a “sense of perspective,” but I may need a new job soon.
FADA,
Thank you very much for your heartfelt comment. I empathize with you. If I weren’t empathetic, I would have chosen a different career path.
But I’m just a commentator. I don’t aim to make individual prosecutors better human beings. I don’t even set myself up to (ahem) judge who is better and who worse. I don’t pretend to have the wisdom know what is just and what is not. And I know that none of my fellow human beings have that wisdom either, whether they know it or not.
The majority of prosecutors come to the Office as mere children, directly from law school, where they went directly from college, where they went directly from high school. Such a background doesn’t prepare a person to understand the anxiety, insecurity, and doubt that most people — including 99% of the people you prosecute — live with every day.
You don’t have to live under a bridge to empathize with people who live under bridges, but the privileged lives most of us lived before being called to the law didn’t help us develop that empathy, and neither will a career spent trying to imprison the downtrodden.
Here’s some perspective: this has been stressful on the worker bees of the office for, what, three weeks? Multiply that by 350 — twenty years of anxiety. That’s the kind of life most people live. If you reflect on that and say there’s no way that would drive you to break the law, then you’re a fool.
I don’t think the world would benefit from most of you losing your jobs. But I do think the world would be a better place if more of you had a much greater sense that there, but for the grace of God, go you.
Mark.
Mark:
I’ve had trouble hitting your site all night; now I wonder why I went to the trouble. What the hell is the point of this post, other than just a gratuitous shot at prosecutors? I’d feel happy to see it removed tomorrow.
Michael,
This post is ancient; how’d you happen upon it?
You’ll have to read the comment about me here to understand the mood in which the title was written.