I complain a lot about autocorrect particularly after I quickly type a text and send it without reviewing my text. Invariably, autocorrect has changed something and made my clearly understandable statement into something utterly confusing. But, after you eliminate these mistakes, which technically are mine because I failed to review the text, I do believe my spelling is getting better because of autocorrect.

The other day I typed tattletail and got the old red line. I was mystified. So I typed tattle tail but it occurred to me that this might be wrong because tattle and tail are two valid words so I was forced to looked it up. Boy was I surprised to learn that I have been misspelling tattletail for a long time. It is tattletale not tattletail.

For some reason, a bunny comes to mind every time I think of tattletale. Which makes me think of tail instead of tale. But after reading the definition it makes so much more sense to spell it tattletale than tattletail. And I owe it all to autocorrect.

So another school shooting in Georgia. Tragically, the FBI actually had this boy on their radar, interviewed him and everything. Yet he still managed to go on his rampage. However, unlike other school shootings, the authorities were on the right track before the massacre and might have prevented it which makes this one worth more than the usual shrug of the shoulders and sigh of deep regret.

It is pointless to bring up new Gun Laws because it just isn’t going to happen. Hearing people saying this wouldn’t happen if only we had right Gun Laws. Right. Keep talking but the right people aren’t listening. It is doubtful that they ever will. Easy access to guns, even for adolescents and mentally ill people, is something that a significant portion of the American Electorate is willing to live with coupled with some ambiguous language in the Constitution makes new gun laws difficult to implement.

I do like the approach of holding parents responsible for the actions of their children. Michigan recently punished the parents of the Oxford High shooter and the father of the Apalachee High School has been arrested on charges too. Parents are, at least in theory, the adults with the most contact with their child. If a parent is worried that their child is dangerous and has access to guns, they have the responsibility to stop that child from using those weapons. This allows the parents to still own guns but puts them on notice that they will be held liable if their child uses those guns illegally. It is a very small step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, it is a reactive measure. The damage has already been done. Is there a way to stop the child from acting and this is where this incident gets interesting. The FBI questioned both the boy and his father about the boy’s intentions. Reading the transcript of the FBI’s interview is heartbreaking because the father claims to have talked to his child about school shootings and was convinced that he understood it was wrong. This is where it stopped though. The father reassuring the cops that nothing would happen.

I would be curious to know if any mental health examination of the child occurred. Nothing, so far, would indicate that one happened but diagnosing mental health issues might be a way to prevent some of these massacres from happening. It would be difficult to argue that someone suffering from schizophrenia has a right to bear arms. If someone is hearing the voice of God and brandishing weapons, I think most reasonable people would say the government has a right to intervene.

It also might encourage a more robust mental health care system. The present mental health system is based on family or self-diagnosis before the person breaks. The mentally ill child might not be the best person to measure his own sanity and parent’s might succumb to wishful thinking about their child. Since most mental illness begins to appear during adolescence and children are required to go to school until 16, a massive program of mental health diagnosis for middle and high school students offers a rare opportunity to comprehensively complete this task with some possibility of success.

This could address an array of mental health issues that the country is facing besides school shootings — homelessness, drug addiction, and alcoholism all have a mental health component and could be addressed. Presently, some school districts require medical examinations and immunizations. Adding a mental health aspect makes sense because children are moving into the adult world, knowing the mental health of a child would give both parents and the schools an opportunity to address any potential issues before they get too far out of hand.

Is this a perfect solution? No. Will it be cheap. No to that. There is no perfect solution and I think it is long past due that we expect policy to be perfect. If that is your criteria, then it will never be met and nothing will ever get done. It will be a first attempt to detect mental health issues in children and to make addressing these mental health issues a public responsibility. A good citizen has an obligation to address mental health issues in themselves and in their families before they become a public danger.

Cheryl Hines is married to Robert Kennedy Jr. Because Kennedy is bat shit crazy and has thrown his support to Trump, Hines, according to some people, must disown him, divorce him or something to show that she doesn’t agree with her bat shit crazy husband. And immediately too. She can’t think about what she might say about her husband, she has to tell us now that he is bat shit crazy and she wants nothing to do with him. Give me a break. This is ridiculous expectation for the following reasons:

1. Where do you stop? Trump is the candidate of the Republican Party. Around half the voting population of the United States supports Trump. I am sure that a number of these people are married to people that disagree with their spouse’s support of Trump. Do they all have to disown their spouse?
2. Why does she have to say anything? Really. A wife isn’t responsible for what her husband says. If people have a problem with what Kennedy says, they should take it up with Kennedy and not Hines. She didn’t say it and she doesn’t have to publicly reprimand her husband because he is talking bull shit.
3. What is the hurry? This just happened over the weekend. Maybe she is thinking about what she wants to do and needs time to sort it out. Silence isn’t agreement and there is no reason to rush her.
4. She is married to the man. Even if she were thinking the worse case scenario — divorce — she still has to negotiate an exit. Her publicly denouncing him could ruin any civil divorce and add more acrimony to an already difficult situation. Why is it necessary for her to quickly tell the world her husband is bat shit crazy?
5. Why can’t she handle this in private. She is married to the man, she has children with the man, and, because of that, she will probably have to deal with the man for the rest of her life. It is unnecessary for her to publicly reprimand him or, for that matter, privately tell him off. It is her business and her business alone.

This is a terrible look for Democrats. She was in a difficult position in the first place. Kennedy made it more difficult by supporting Trump. She, personally, has done nothing wrong, nor is she a public official. She has a right to her own thoughts on the matter and is under no obligation to inform the public what those thoughts are. She can handle it the best way she sees fit as it is nobody’s business what she says and does about it.

The other day I posted a blog about Roger Kimball’s “What the Right Gets Wrong About Art. For some reason, I was having a difficult time finishing the post. Every time I worked on this post I found myself trying to cover too much ground and I was having trouble connecting all that I wanted to say. At the time, I decided to post what I had (see here) and return to the part I was having trouble with.

Kimball’s larger point was that because the Right abandoned culture, the Left took over and this was why Art is all crap now. You know the sad old song — things used to be better in the good old days. Within this criticism, he referred to a troubling quote about race from the Australian Philosopher David Stove. David Stove writes:

Western Europe found that its anti-academy had become its academy ‘even in the twinkling of an eye.’ The galleries were suddenly full of the art of African societies formerly the most despised. Victorian architecture was all at once the object of a universal detestation, or rather horror. Black music began its long and excruciating revenge on the white man. The Jazz Age, in short, had arrived.

Kimball is being provocative without context. What does this mean in Kimball’s larger argumen? He fails to incorporates what Stove is saying into his argument. So it lies there like a big old sore that everybody can see but everyone is too polite to talk about. There is clearly a racist wack here at African Art and Black Music.

Maybe Kimball thought his readers should be able to connect the dots without his help but I fear then that I am being dragged into an argument of my making and not Kimball’s. Ignoring it however is allowing such a comment to go unchallenged. It’s like letting old people get away with using the N Word. They are too old to change and you want to keep the old fellow calm in case you cause a heart attack. This maybe true but then Grandpa gets the idea that he can spew his racist’s thinking with impunity.

The question, I have, is does he agree with Stove? If African art was previously despised why was it despised and what is his opinion on it. Even if he is talking about primitive art, which isn’t clear at all, what does this art have to do with the Left or Right wing. If the art predates the present political divisions, how can the Right abandoning culture have anything to do with the Art these people produced. Also, if the primitive nature of the art is setting him off, how does he feel about the art of early homo sapiens drawn in the caves. It is hardly beautiful by present standards, but it is definitely art. Why is Jazz (or as Stove puts it black music) the revenge of the black man on the white man? These are volatile statements that require more explanation. Kimball just drops it in and never mentions it again. I can only, then, assume that he agrees with Stove’s racist sentiments.

The real problem here is the limits of Kimball’s definition of art — it has to have a universal agreement about beauty. Everyone, everywhere has to agree that it is beautiful. Which is an impossible standard. Why not just good (art I like) and bad (art I don’t like). Kimball admits that most art is bad art. If he would have left it at that, I could have gotten on board with him. A lot of modern is crap but then there are very few pieces of great. Which makes sense. This is the whole reason critics point out what they think is good. They are trying to differentiate it from the every day piece of art.

I am not sure why he abandons the bad art/good art distinction for art has to be beautiful. He has a political agenda here that is blinding him to this much easier standard. But he hates the art he sees as Left Wing statements that he will not even dignify it with the art designation. Then he adds barely formed racial animus to his equation that leaves me wondering — what is really upset about.

Kimball seems to harken back to the days when art was the Sistine Chapel and Shakespeare. An Art that had very limited reach until the 20th century. Confined to the elites of Europe and North America, Art was strictly defined by this class because they were the only ones who really knew anything about art. But regular people all over the globe had very little contact. The technological advances of the 20th century brought art to an enormous number of people. Unfortunately for Kimball and company, their reaction to this was different than these elites had hoped. Instead of wanting to perpetuate these old ideas of art, they used them as a stepping stone for something completely new.

It is perfectly fine not to like it but to say it doesn’t even pass the muster of art is ridiculous. Who gave you the deciding vote? The better approach would be for the Right to start creating Art that the world might want to see. No one is stopping them. Why isn’t it happening instead of whining about what gets passed off as art these days.