It wasn't a surprise when Meat came running out of his house waving the newspaper at me on Monday. I'd managed to avoid him all weekend, but just how long can you avoid your neighbor?
Not long enough.
"There you are! What have you got to say for yourself this time?" Meat swatted at me with the rolled up News-Express. "It was a terrorist attack, I told right off! But nooooo...you said it was just some nut with a gun. Had nothing to do with Islam! "
At the moment, I was unsure if a nut with a gun was that much scarier than a nut with a rolled up newspaper. If I didn't know the 295 pound giant wearing a housecoat, pajama bottoms and workboots, I'd be worried.
"Yeah, Meat. Looks like I was wrong on some details. But that wasn't the point of the..."
"You were wrong all right," he exclaimed, holding the Opinion Page up about 3 inches from my nose. "Here it is in black and white!"
Meat proceeded to dance around me in a circle waving the paper over his head and chanting, "SJ was wro-ong, I was ri-ight, you know you can't deny it, it's here in black and whi-ite."
There's only one thing, besides laugh, you can do in that situation. That is to take it. I had to. He was right. I was wrong. Sometimes that's what happens.
"Well, Meat, what can I say. That's what I get for commenting on something before all the information is in."
He got a glint in his eye and grinned wide. "No difference than old Fox News, are you SJ!?!" With that he spun and literally skipped back into his house, cackling all the way.
That was a low blow. But he had a point and it hurts when Meat gets any points on me. Opinion writing isn't supposed to be news reporting, but I take pride in getting the facts straight when I"m making up a good story.
News reporting isn't supposed to be opinion making, either, but that's what you get with cable. Reporting events in real time is a crap shoot if you're trying to get the facts right. Speculation in real time is just fertilizer. Last week we spread just a little.
This week I know San Bernardino was an act of terror perpetrated by Islamic radicals. One of those radicals was natural born citizen.
I also know that his older brother, who grew up in the same house going to the same mosque, is a US Navy veteran of the Iraq War. And an Islamic-American crowd funding site has raised well over $100,000 for families of the victims of the tragedy.
The problem isn't a religion, it is extremism in the name of a religion. No religion is immune. Not Islam, not Christianity, not Judaism, not Hinduism.
Extremes in politics should be scrutinized, too. The best punch line in American politics suddenly isn't nearly as funny. The Donald wants to ban Muslims because he can't come up with anything more despicable at the moment. It's just a matter of time before he's calling for concentration camps.
Oops, sorry. There I go speculating again.