Gathering Speed

A topic that has been very much on my mind was recently tackled by the great Aceman as part of his full salvo of common sense attack on the psychotic, money grubbing lich that is Gloria Allred. The trial system in this country is obsolete. It was designed to create as fair and unbiased a trial as possible by selecting jurors who didn’t know the plaintiff, the defendant, or anything about the trial. The thing is, the only people they would select were rich, white, landowning men, who were also the only educated people back then. This isn’t to say that we go back to a racist/sexist/moneyist (what the hell?) juror selection system. But the problem is that with information being so readily available (I can watch TV on my cellphone using a brilliant device called a Slingbox), the only people left who don’t know about these high profile cases are going to be uneducated shut-ins; that’s just a fact. In my hour and a half stint on ESPN1300 last week, I received a dozen questions about my opinion regarding the Michael Richards situation (since, as a standup, I get to deal with hecklers and hecklerquette all the time). This was a sports show for christssake, and they were talking about this case (I use that term, because Allred is trying to make it into one). So if this thing does go to trial, who the hell would they find for the jury? Who doesn’t know about it? Uneducated people who can be easily manipulated by Allred and her ravings. All she has to do is drop the racism card and everyone on the jury will be terrified of letting a “convicted racist” get off “scott free” (I put that in quotes, because Richards’ isn’t exactly getting out of this with his career or life in tact).

I agree wholeheartedly with the Aceman on this one: hurt feelings should never incur financial damages because there’s no hospital bill or wages lost. The “victims” in the comedy club did not feel threatened by a skinny senior citizen onstage with a microphone. And if this thing does go to trial, Michael Richards will pay Gloria Allred, a rich, white, landowning vulture of a woman, a couple million dollars. Is that how our system is really supposed to work? If Michael Richards wasn’t Kramer but instead worked at a Jiffy Lube, would Allred be demanding justice in the form of a wire transfer?

How do you fix it? Two choices: either a lie detector, the technology of which has become so advanced that it’s 99.99999999999999% accurate (which is more than you can say for jurors [re: human error] or birth control medication), or a bench trial. The former was the Aceman’s solution, and I see no problem with mine: a single, impartial, heavily educated and heavily experienced arbitrator who employs common sense and analysis to find the truth. No more games, no more manipulation, no more ignorance, no more Gloria goddamn Allred. Here’s hoping a house falls on her.