this is no longer my blog

well, yesterday i couldn't stand to not sit and watch t.v. anymore, and regardless of the fact that the cable company isn't coming until this thursday to hook up the cable i managed to find one channel that sort of comes in on my t.v. it was a fox network, and so i thought it would work because i could still watch the simpsons (albeit a fuzzy simpsons) and other good shows. but that night must have been "criminals on t.v." marathon night, or something, because they played Cops after Cops broken up with only one episode of America's Most Wanted. now i am not a big Cops fan. i think it almost exploits people, showing mostly minorities who are usually drunk or stoned resisting arrest or fleeing from a stolen car or whatnot, and then being manhandled by the cops. i don't like the way it represents minorities or lower class citizens at all, and think that television would be a much better place without it... anyway, to get off that little soap box, i figured that i could suck it up and take care of my t.v. fix (i was eating supper AND i had a book just in case i needed to use the t.v. as background noise instead) and so i watched the episodes of Cops. well one that i watched was the "drugs in the city" or "narcotics unit" or some such title, which meant that it was going to be all focused on drug busts. well, there you have ONE part of my argument... these people will all be stoned. so, it was set in hawaii and they are sharing the squad car with this young polynesian cop and he's talking about why he loves to be a cop in hawaii, when he spots a car with expired tags or some such thing... thinking it could possibly be a stolen car, he turns on his lights and it's obvious that the car is not going to stop. so it pulls into a parking lot and the driver, who happened to be white NOT a minority, hops out of the car and takes off running. well, the cop gets out to chase, but for some reason doesn't follow through with the chase and calls for more back up and searches the car and finds crystal meth. well, the young man had run into a condominium complex, and another squad car managed to pull in on the other side and they ended up arresting him. now this episode did something that i haven't normally seen on a cops episode and didn't focus on the whole arrest scene. the man was barely mistreated at all. but they put him in the car and take him to the station and this young man just pours out his heart: he has been in prison his whole adult life. the only people he knows anymore are criminals, and so there is little hope for him to fall into a better crowd once he's released. he said that he was in prison for three years, and that whole time managed to stay clean, but he's not out of prison for three months and he's back on the stuff, because he falls back into the same crowd. it ends up he was breaking parole to go visit his three month old daughter who he's never seen because he's been in prison. it was heart wrenching. and the words of wisdom that poured out of the police officers mouth to the young man were: "it's all about the meth... it'll ruin your life." and then it cut to commercial... obviously i would have thought of something better and more pastoral to say to the unfortunate and obviously grieving young man... of course that is what i get paid for. so i thank you Cops for that brief moment of showing the humanity of the people on your show who so often get basically parodied and minimized. even if it, well, not exactly ruined by the comment at the end, but it would have been much better without it.
anyway, i should head for bed... have a 7:00 breakfast with the Lutheran Men in Mission tomorrow, and i should be a good pastor intern and show up... even though it is God forsakenly early... and by God forsaken I don't really mean that God has forsaken it... it's just dang early.