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Turner stunt charges inappropriate
The Transportation Security Administration continues to shake down little old ladies in wheelchairs, lest able-bodied Arab men be offended at being subjected to added scrutiny.
And in Boston last week, police hyper-reacted to a bomb actually a flashing circuit board that only a deluded Lost in Space junkie would believe to be a bomb. Now two young advertising staffers for Turner Broadcasting face felony charges. Welcome to the age of thoughtless bureaucratic over-reaction, in which earnest people insist upon following Draconian procedure when common sense shouts otherwise.
The Turner stunt, in this post-9/11 era, certainly was tasteless and maybe a little stupid. But to stir a major emergency in a major city over a blinking circuit board a high-tech version of a Lite Bright design requires a special kind of unthinking, bureaucratic stupidity.
A hard road to travel
Getting to the top in the entertainment industry is not an easy road, and it's even harder when you can't see your rocky and potholed road. Despite these tiring obstacles, entertainers with disabilities do not seen to be daunted by them - they have decided to trod on. Sydney Thorpe, keyboard player for Fab 5, has always loved playing the piano and says when he was a child it was one of his few loves. Since then he has graduated to bigger things - namely, playing with Fab 5 for many years. He says throughout the years, the public has embraced him without much bias. "First of all, it was like moving from hot to cold. At that time people started to see me on TV and hear me on radio. They didn't see a blind guy, they saw me, Sydney Thorpe ... If them never know my name, them say 'musician'.
Rescuing children opens new world
Seven years ago, Pam Cope ran a hair salon in Neosho, a tiny southwest Missouri town, and her husband, Randy, had just been named vice president of a company that ran a string of newspapers there and in neighbouring states. Their lives revolved around their son's baseball games, their daughter's dance lessons and trips to places like Walt Disney World. "My world was very small," Cope said in a telephone interview in late January from Neosho, where she still lives. "I was pretty shallow." Few would say that today. Earlier in January, Cope returned from Ghana, where she had financed the rescue of seven children who were working as indentured servants on fishing boats for as little as $20 a year. The youngest of them, Mark Kwadwo, 6, had laboured in dire conditions under a brutal fisherman who beat him when he did not get up at midnight to bail out canoes.
Students Collect Backpacks For Wounded Soldiers
JONESBORO -- Some Nettleton School District students are teaming up with the parents of a wounded soldier to make life a little easier for troops injured in the line of duty.The parents of Reddi Parker, a member of the 875th Engineer Battalion of the Arkansas Army National Guard, visited with students at Fox Meadow Intermediate Center who have siblings or parents serving in the military, many of them in Iraq, Afghanistan or Kuwait.Mona and Dan Parker engaged about 12 students at the school, including their son Chase, in gathering backpacks to send to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. Mona Parker said many of the soldiers at the military hospital have multiple injuries and are in wheelchairs. A backpack would make it easier for them to carry items around."They have to exercise every day to get those muscles going," Mona Parker added.The Parkers asked students to include a note in each backpack so the troops would know where the backpacks came from and would feel the support of the students.To inspire the group, Dan Parker got his son Reddi, who is hospitalized at Walter Reed, on the phone to thank the students and ask for their prayers.
The SCOOTER Store Applauds Rep. Rangel For Holding Congressional ...
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas, Jan. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The SCOOTER Store applauds efforts by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel to address poverty in America with a hearing today that will examine its social and economic consequences. Rep. Rangel noted that 37 million Americans live in poverty, a figure that includes more than five million people who have been poverty-stricken since the year 2000; poverty had been steadily declining. .
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