Differing Visions -

Over the weekend, American TV aired a 1978 cult classic movie: Eyes of Laura Mars. The movie successfully captures the zeitgeist of that particular time and place.

It depicts the world of American fashion magazines and their subculture during that particular era. But it also raises some serious questions. In 1957, an earlier movie, also depicting the same subculture, had a much brighter tone.

What changed so drastically between the earlier Funny Face and the later darker, more violent and dangerous tone of Laura Mars?

Our society changed, of course.

Closer to SoFlo, the Tampa Bay Times published a major expose over the weekend about their local provisions for the Homeless. Nothing even remotely similar could happen in Broward County, where the newspaper is part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

The Homeless are routinely depicted as a monolithic army of aggressive and ghoulish zombies bent on invading coffee shops and public places to victimize normal people.

There are essentially two reasons for this depiction. First, the Homeless are often used by unscrupulous real estate dealers for blockbusting and other such shady purposes. But the real estate industry is one of the last major advertisers in the local newspaper, so their press agents get away with it.

And second, some coffee shops now have security guards and armed militias to protect them from "homeless invaders." The presence of these militias is conditioning the public to accept a kind of banana republic martial law as the New Normal.

The U.S. Senate will hold a special hearing scheduled for tomorrow about how the Stand Your Ground Law was responsible for Trayvon Martin's violent attack on a neighborhood crime watcher in Sanford Florida. His nominal birth mother Sybrina Fulton is expected to attend.

It looks like Florida state representative Alan Williams is trying to turn this issue into a full-blown race war. As the chairman of the Florida Legislative Black Caucus, he is planning to attend.

According to Trayvon phone pal Rachel Jeantel, he was loitering near other people's mailboxes on the evening of his fatal misadventure. But the MSM seemed much more interested in covering her fingernail decorations, which utterly exasperated me.

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