As far as I’m concerned the show should be called One and a Half Men…and Charlie Sheen is that one and a half.  Charlie Sheen gets alot of attention for being the (former) highest paid TV actor. Who cares? TV is for losers, it’s like contract work in the legal world. That’s not what makes Sheen rich. Sheen is rich because he has so much damn time on his hands. You have this wealth of time too, and in a similar environment of zero accountability, easy access to drugs and loose women…where showing up for work for two hours a day does actually induce others to give you kudos.  This place is called Academia.  Let me put it another way.  What does the best law school in the country (Yale) produce? Law Professors.  Why? Law Professors aren’t rich after all (though they make more money than most of us ever will).  The reason is that in academia you have TIME and ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY.

Trust me on this one.  As a bro I competed with law professors to take slam pieces to pound town all the time.  I had to let a number of the professors see me take pictures of them with my phone in order to scare them away from my prey.  Also as an actor, even I pass up most opportunities for pilots in favor of small roles in films and the occasional commercial.  Why? Look at the Mac Book kid.  He hocs computers for a couple of years and suddenly he’s standing next to Bruce Willis in Die Hard 4.  Ever see that kid on “How I Met Your Mother?” Hell no.

This is supposed to be one of those rare uplifting posts.  Work with me kids.

Regardless of what the market is like at least right now you can pretty much do whatever you want, and get the money to pay for it.  In fact, the dismal economic situation has caused a lot of your female classmates to realize that they’re never going to be able to get married and have children.  The best they can hope for is that a sibling five years younger or older might luck out and produce offspring so there is someone to bury their crazy spinster Aunt.  Once a woman starts thinking like this she ceases to think each guy might be “the one” and starts to think that each guy might be “the last.” This usually coincides with the revelation that once they graduate they will be exposed to the same let’s say…seven males each day between 20 and 60 who are even capable of having sex and that’s IF they are lucky enough to find some kind of employment, otherwise the number is 0-2.  Guys, could it be any easier?

Yes.  Ask a woman a simple question.  That question is “Do you have a cat?” If the answer is yes she will go home with you that night.  If the answer is two, she will invite you back to her place.  Three or more and you can take her into the bathroom and do whatever you want to her.  You don’t even have to keep your abs tight gentlemen (unless you’re losing your hair).

Guys it’s like this.  I have a frenemy who works for an engineering firm, never had any debt and he’s also a whiz at picking his own stocks.  I hate his politics and I am jealous of his accomplishments.  But you know what? He’s fat and his parents never got his teeth fixed and I know based on the awkward facebook messages he leaves on female friend’s pages that he is three months from being a 30 year-old virgin.  The guy whose banging the hottest girl wins.  There are no desirable men left.  Regardless of your money or employment status put yourself in a place where there are constantly a surplus of women between 15 – 35 and you will get laid for the rest of your life.  Sure, you can’t fall in love because if you stay with any one woman long enough your inadequacy as a mate will eventually occur to her but that can be a blessing in disguise.

Remember, we don’t love them ‘hos.

I love you Charlie.  Keep on keeping it real you stupid, drunk addict bastard.  If you need a lawyer holler at me! Text David Chapelle if you need a reference.

Clarence Thomas is only the second African-American ever to sit on the Supreme Court.  He was nominated by the first President Bush when Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American ever to sit on the Supreme Court, retired.  I do not care for Clarence Thomas.  Neither do 98% of African-Americans – ever since he first caught Reagan’s eye for being willing to perpetuate lies about African-Americans and his systematic destruction of the EEOC.  Twenty years later, he sits alienated and alone on the court, under a self-imposed vow of silence.  After his wife accepted over $700,000 to lobby against President Obama’s groundbreaking Healthcare reform, Thomas stands poised to cast the deciding vote rendering a law unconstitutional, purely on political grounds, that will directly cause the death of hundreds of thousands of the poorest Americans.  Ladies and gentleman I give you Clarence Thomas, the first Student Debtor.

Clarence Thomas has all the symptoms.  Self-loathing, shame, a feeling that he should be making a heck of alot more than he should, a HUGE wealth gap between himself and alumnus who were better off going in financially AND FINALLY a deep-seated hatred for his alma mater.  I witnessed his rage once, as a child.  I made the mistake of asking him what it was like to follow in the footsteps of Thurgood Marshall.  It was an innocent enough question.  I did not know at the time he was specifically nominated to destroy that great legacy.  I had never seen hate like that in the eyes of a black man, I thought only KKK and cops were capable of that.

I do not know if Clarence Thomas had to borrow money to attend Yale Law School.  I do know he was dirt poor.  I do know that when he graduated he couldn’t get any of the jobs he thought he was entitled to, and thus began a rather undistinguished career in the government.  I’m sure Thomas didn’t intend to sit on the bench long.  After being a federal judge he would be guaranteed a corner office at a white shoe firm where his only job would be to drum up business with clients whom he happened to rule in favor of during his tenure on the bench.

A lot of judges do this – greed is greed.  But with a student debtor there is something more, a sense you’ve been behind your whole life, and the older you get the worse the feeling gets.  Thomas was probably a year, two years tops, from leaving the bench before all the evil happened.  The nomination.  The accusation – painful, not because it wasn’t true (all evidence would suggest that it is) but because it came from a BLACK woman.  He could understand if he’d treated a white woman as such, but he didn’t.  He was black and on the brink of receiving one of the highest honors in the land.  Where was the support of the black community?

Twenty years later he can see the crowning achievement of the first black President about to fall in his lap.  Obama.  The black community universally approves of Obama.  Nay, they worship him.  No, not quite, but they do love him.  And they will love him forever.  Just as Thomas will always be hated and scorned.

Often a talented student does the following analysis when picking a school: although it is not impossible to go to a lesser school and be successful, it is “more difficult” to do so from that lower starting point.  Thomas no doubt made this decision.  It would be “easier” or “more likely” that he would be successful going to a Yale Law as opposed to a Howard, Thurgood Marshall’s alma mater.  Makes sense…but that’s only because everything I’ve told you about Thomas, and the student debtor generally, doesn’t show up on paper.

Thomas and Justice Marshall were different in just about every way.  Justice Marshall almost universally had clerks from the Ivy League.  Including Justice Kagan.  Thomas on the other hand prefers clerks from non-Ivy league law schools.  Perhaps the grass is always greener.  Perhaps there is something deeper going on.

We all know how I feel about Sarah Palin.  Also random, pointless atrocities are usually Icarus 30’s department.  So I felt no need to comment on the Tuscon Shooting and Sarah Palin’s supposed link.  I know we (and by we I mean I) stretch the premise of this blog to sort of talk about what we want to talk about BUT I actually do not see a link between mass-murder/mass-murder-suicide and student debt.  Sure, kids have no options, there’s no hope, yadda yadda yadda but let’s think about this people.  Anyone who is willing to roll over and take the constant abuse from the for-profit and student-loan industry probably just doesn’t have enough of the will to act, for good or evil, to either perpetrate or try and stop an attack like this.  But then as always…Sarah Palin rears her head and now I have to rant.  The day after the Dr. King holiday no less.

Look, Sarah Palin just got unlucky.  She put up cross-hairs on some congressmen and congresswomen and one of them actually got shot at a bad time for her.  She of course responds by accusing the shooter of being “Left-leaning.” Alright, that’s pretty reprehensible but here’s what REALLY urks me, Palin’s mention of Dr.  King in her most recent garbage memoir.

Sarah Palin claims in her memoir that the realization of Dr. King’s dream would be the realization of the idea of American Exceptionalism, which she harps on because of the President’s response to the loaded question “Do you believe America is Exceptional?” Obviously there is no right answer to that question if you want to have any shred of intellectual honesty. Clearly, if you say yes, you are being arrogant and it undermines the President as one of the most popular American Presidents with the rest of the world.  And of course if you say “no” then you’re being unpatriotic.  Anyway, what enrages me is all the subtle little lies in what at first might appear to be a very harmless reference in a book whose only redeeming quality is a collection of quotes from famous Americans and America-friendly people.

First, if the realization of Dr. King’s dream, and in the context it’s clear that even Sarah Palin doesn’t think it’s realized yet, means that America is exceptional…then HOW can you say the country is exceptional NOW?  Her entire BOOK is about putting America BACK to the way it WAS once upon a magical time.  Did minorities have more rights in PAST AMERICA? Did women? What kind of tripe is this insipid, incompetent woman peddling?

Ok…so let’s look at some other Dr. King-esque themes and see where Palin falls.  Firearms.  Dr. King wasn’t just assassinated, he had half a dozen attempts on his life before he was killed.  If the internet had been around in the ’60s how many crosshairs do you think would have been on him?

Let’s look at healthcare reform.  Healthcare reform disproportionately benefits poor people and minorities.  How did Dr. King feel about poor people? How does Sarah Palin feel about Healthcare reform?

How about war? Dr. King even broke with Lyndon Johnson, who had just signed the CIVIL RIGHTS ACT because he opposed the Vietnam War.  How do you think he’d feel about a war monger who wants to REPEAL THE 14th Amendment?!

But here is the big one.  Character.  “The CONTENT of one’s CHARACTER.”  What is the content of Sarah Palin’s CHARACTER?! Now again, I am not talking about her ideas or their merit.  I am talking about her personal integrity and who she is as a person.  Sarah Palin is a disgusting, morally bankrupt individual with no redeeming qualities.

Sarah Palin is a liar.  She particularly lies about the President and his policies: think death panels and the birther movement.  Part of the reason she quit the governorship was because she was about to be dragged into court where a huge bank of her lies were about to be exposed.

Sarah Palin is greedy.  She is one of the few current politicians who is actually a member of the news media.  She charges an exorbitant speaking fee, and whores herself out on television at every opportunity.  She probably embezzled money from the Mcain-Palin campaign fund.  She is suspected of embezzling money from the state of Alaska.

Sarah Palin also is cowardly and insecure.  She’s scared to participate in debates or even interviews.  She clearly feels inferior due to her lack of academic and professional accomplishments.  It’s clear in every step she takes, every word she speaks and every look she gives.

Finally and perhaps worst of all, Sarah Palin brings out the worst in people.  She promotes, fear, hate and mistrust – not hope, love and understanding. THAT is the content of HER character.  And that’s all I have to say about that.

I lied.

Dr. King has been dead 40+ years. You might live another 40 and if madness grips the country even become President. But know this: no matter how hard you spew your vitrolic hate, no matter how hard you twist Christianity to support your own self-interested ends, no matter how hard you claim that Americans, and by inference white Conservative Americans, are superior you will NEVER repeal the fundamental way Dr. King transformed this nation and the world. I would also be willing to bet that lying on your deathbed, many years from now, that you’d be willing to trade every day from this day to that to come back to any interview, speech or event and demonstrate one shred of his eloquence, his brilliance or feel one iota of his immeasurable love. Dr. King was the greatest American that ever lived. You, Sarah Palin, are not worthy to be called American.

It’s been a hell of a two weeks. The shooting in Arizona. The character and fitness failure of a public defender due to excessive student loan debt and somehow the whole OJ thing got stirred up again. Not surprising. I mean if we are going to repeal healthcare and the 14th Amendment while we’re at it why not?

While we’re on the subject of OJ, let this be a lesson to establishment types: if you do something wrong enough, it will eventually come back to bite you in the ass. When planting evidence to circumvent due process becomes the usual path to conviction, complete with dehumanizing racial slurs, eventually there is going to be a colossal fuck up.

Going into debt for higher education is alot like planting evidence to get a conviction. Things will be worse at first no doubt, that is if you stop, but if you don’t something extremely bad will happen and it will haunt you for the rest of your life.

I understand. You’re just trying to get through the next year or two. The cop is the same, he just wants the next conviction. You think things like “I’m smart, people like me, I’ll get a job, it will all work out.” The cop thinks “He’s a dirt bag, nobody will miss him, I’m sure he’s guilty, it will all work out.”

Ok, so school’s not the answer, what now? Well that’s the hard part, but it can be condensed into 3 steps: 1) minimize all expenses 2) start looking for ANY job paying ANY amount and 3) start making a job.

There are nuances of course. Minimizing expenses means you can’t afford rent, you defer your loans, BUT the biggest tip is, wait for it, cash only. No credit cards. No checks. Any job means any job not just the ones you got an education for and create your own job means figure out some work to do on the side. Caution: This is not your final project for your Econ major. Do not spend your last two grand registering a business called ” The [your last name here] Group” and paying someone to build a website that is perpetually under construction. I am talking low-tech manual labor cash only type work. Like shoveling snow.

Anyway it ain’t easy. But it’s the only way.

He was given everything from
Life
He took everything from
Life
He hung himself from
High
He left a garbled message
The ink is smeared
I cannot read it

To whom is it addressed? Does it say dear brother? Was he one of us?

Should I shed my last tear
or save it for the unknown veteran
of many battles with despair
Whose world became so black
He may yet to have realized he is even dead?

Why is Ashton Krutcher still relevant? He snagged himself a cougar named Demi Moore. He took Demi Moore from Bruce Willis. Bruce FUCKING Willis. I think I can take Todd Palin. His name is Todd for heavens sake.

Alpha Man’s rant got me thinking. Why not work for her campaign, start sleeping with her, be her shoulder to cry on when she divorces Todd in 2014 to take the country’s attention off the horrible job she’s doing as Prez. And then marry her a month before she’s up for re-election?

Now I know, I know she’s already haggard-looking and by 2014 she’s 50. And by the time we’re married she’ll have great grand children if the next Palin generation is anything like the preceding ones. Yeah there are her slutty daughters but Bristol is no looker and it’s too early to tell about the others. But hear me out. I rarely talk about my cougar conquests but there have been some doozies. Plus once I am in front of that camera and get the type of exposure the Palins get it’s over folks. It really is. I look that good and the sound of my voice is addictive. I am like Dickie V. To a college basketball fan.

Obviously if I do this the Presidency is mine. A Palin administration will mean the end of all standards and the United States will officially be a circus/place for the worlds best and brightest to get drunk and screw for four years before taking tomorrow’s ideas back to their home country. But I’ve always wanted to be a Ring Master. I wouldn’t even have to run Republican, I could pull an Arnold. That way when I divorce her it will seem like a principled thing and not her having gotten old. So so old.

I guess the larger point here is relationships. It was like this back in the days of monarchy and it’s like this now. Marriage, dating, all of it is about what you can do for someone else and what they can do for you. Right now you need something, someone to pay your debt. Right now there is a wealthy benefactor who needs a relatively young person with an interesting story. Even better if the wealthy benefactor is dumber than runny eggs. But you need to move quickly. Smart money hangs around, but youth is fleeting.

I would hate to be Sarah Palin’s child. I love my parents, especially my mother and I don’t relish the feeling of hating the person who gave birth to you. Worse, what if I turned out to be like 99% of people and overlook the fact that she is a morally bankrupt, sociopathically insecure, parasitic American Disgrace leaching the very marrow from the bones supporting the American infrastructure simply because she’s my mom and in doing so I guarantee myself a life of wealth, comfort and relative significance? What a dilemma! [note to critics, please take notice to how I am feeling sorry for someone else, not myself].

But then I realized that the Palin brood has something in common with us here at Debtor’s Prison. There lives are all or nothing. Read on to see what I mean.

I HOPE by now you’ve faced a harsh reality: your reality will never resemble that of your average sitcom father, providing a middle class lifestyle for his family with only modest to moderate credentials, effort and employment. You are either going to be a spectacular failure with a standard of living worse than your parents OR you are going to be wildly successful such that you can pay off your debt and begin to build wealth.

Now I will acknowledge that at first it seems that Sarah Palin’s children are not at all in the same boat. There educations, if they bother with them, are paid for – and they would really have to piss off mommy to not be rich for the rest of their lives.  To understand what I mean we have to return to my sitcom dad analogy.

In addition to providing for his family with relative ease the sitcom dad also is presented with moral and philosophical softballs. Do I steal cable? Do I teach my kids not to discriminate against minorities and homosexuals? Do I cheat on my spouse? They are not in situations where stealing, discrimination and cheating are the family business. The sitcom dad can live his life occasionally making a stand for a principle here or there, but nothing really at stake. Palin kids can’t do this.

The Palin children will eventually be faced with a choice: openly and publicly denounce everything their family stands for and face the ridicule, financial loss and heart ache of a broken family OR not do that and be an accomplice to the blight that Sarah Palin is to the civilized world.

The tide is against them. Soldier-boy and bastard factory aren’t getting off that gravy train, nor is daddy.  The youngest would have to overcome all the aforementioned and down syndrome to do it. That just leaves the handful of middle children. Regardless of their decision they will never ever have the luxury of having a predominantly morally neutral existence where questions of principle only come up on election day or by chance when witnessing an injusstice up close. They will rescue slaves or whip them, hide Jews or operate gas chambers, be an advocate for the oppressed and down trodden or a tool for those who profit off of misery and insist that by doing so they are living righteously.

Alpha Man responded to my last article so I thought I would return the favor. I too was there when Benito decided to steer clear of Debt Free U. I thought it was the right decision and Alpha Man’s diatribe confirms that.

Look, I am not taking a position one way or another. I haven’t read the book. But what I am saying is that if you take the premise that Benito and Alpha Man put forward that their degrees have been worthless with respect to landing jobs, then regardless of a Debt Free U degree’s value in the marketplace, it’s better than doing it any other way because it’s the cheapest option.

Let’s make a common analogy. Say your degree is toilet paper. You’re unemployed or under employed in an unrelated field. How is your status made worse by changing the name on your degree? If you search “shame” on this blog you will probably think a lesser known name is actually better. Returning to the toilet paper example, if you buy a six pack of the roughest, weakest toilet paper around for 2 bucks, and then you find a way to get the same quantity for 1 buck but you’ve never tried it, aren’t you better off with taking a chance and paying the $1?

The analogy falls apart a bit. Toilet paper in theory can always be worse, say with an allergen embedded in it, and you only do undergrad once – though one can always get more degrees I suppose.  The point is – if you take Benito and Alpha Man at their literal word their degrees and most like them are worthless. Therefore the only variable is cost.

I know this is a year late, but for those of you that know me I was dealing with a little something last year and for you smart-asses the blog’s not a year old yet.  Michael Jackson.  The King of Pop.  A Legend.  He was also an accused child molester, the father of three 100% biologically Caucasian children…and a much lighter complexion than the one he was born with.  I have a theory about the motivations behind the latter.

For those of you who follow my posts you know that I recently saw a production of Thurgood, one that still resonates with me.  After five drinks and ten Michael Jackson videos (or was it the other way around) something occurred to me.  Brown v. Board was decided in 1954.  Michael Jackson was born in 1958.  Now, it was proved during that case to the satisfaction of all nine Supreme Court Justices that Segregation, and to a greater extent American Society,  poisoned the self-image of young African-Americans.  Now suppose Michael Jackson was not immune to this affliction?

I felt compelled to write this when I presented with a very compelling case that Michael Jackson did in fact suffer from the disease Vitaligo.  I asked myself why it came as such a shock to me that he was in fact sick given the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE to artificially and uniformally lighten one’s skin.  There is no such thing as a reverse tan.  I was forced to come to the difficult conclusion that I was swept up in a society, generations after Michael’s, that assumed that if a black man could get lighter skin he would.

I could write a fairly long essay about the specifics of the inferiority complex heaped upon young African-Americans but I believe it is enough to say that Michael Jackson’s behavior both as a child and as a man can be more than explained by the extensive research conducted by Thurgood Marshall and his team dealing with the damaged psyche of African-American youth.  I believe it can be rightly assumed that constantly being in the spotlight from a young age accelerated this phenomenon. 

This would explain the surgeries, the hair, and the choice of surrogate.  The choice of surrogate…all parents want what’s best for their children.  They all want to give their children what they themselves could not have.  Michael Jackson was and is the most famous entertainer in the world.  There was only one thing in this world he could not have…natural white features.

Here at Debtor’s Prison we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Laurence Fishburne for his portrayal of Thurgood Marshall in Thurgood and Michelle Alexander for her scholarship in The New Jim Crow. The latter work deals with incarceration in America.

I will be the first to admit there is alot of negativity on this blog.  Being up to your eyeballs in debt and underemployed, unemployed or employed with no job security is not a state of being that leads a normal person to be cheery or upbeat.  That is why it is extra important that we take the time to acknowledge those who are making a conscious effort to improve our world and could be pursuing other things that no doubt would lead to less work and more money.

So thank you Mr. Fishburne and Dr. Alexander.  You’ve done more than you can know.