Jon Batson
The Artist.  The Author.

Jay Leno sent me a photo today. It is a picture of him on a motor cycle and it is signed. I'm going to frame it. It's nice to meet someone who not only reads his mail but responds.

Dear Mr. Leno,

I suppose you could call this a hate letter. Somewhere I heard that you get a lot of those. So I thought, if writing you hate mail is so popular, I'd give it a try.

So, I hate that you left late night TV. For a week or two I hung on to see if anyone – anyone – was going to be funny. They weren't. On the up-side, I got more sleep, as I went to bed at 11:00 instead of waiting up to see you at 11:35.

I hate that you went on the air at 10:00, as it cut into some of my favorite shows – on another network,  but I did switch over to you on the commercials, sometimes losing track of the time and in the process a large part of the story line. Sometimes I just abandoned the show and left it on NBC.

I hate it that you are back on the late night slot, because that means that I can't get that extra sleep any more, or that I have to miss your monologue. I hate it when that happens.

And I hate that you are taking flack from so many for being rich and successful. I mean, isn't that what we all want? Isn't the goal of every single individual to eventually become so successful that we are rich as a result? Believe me, every male worth the label wants your garage. Every female wants a male who has your garage.

I hate that you are taking flack from other talk show hosts for being popular and funny. Isn't that what they are trying to do – and failing miserably? They should study you, maybe they can become popular and funny.

And finally, I hate that someone as broadly popular, a fixture in today's society, the hallmark for having arrived, should endure this crapola. It just goes to show what I have said for so long: America hates heroes. The American press and people have always longed to see every hero brought down. They love a story about someone who should be beloved arrested, divorced, in rehab, in an accident or on trial for murder. There are snakes in the popular press that begin looking for smut the very moment someone comes into the public spotlight.

So now you're back on late night TV at NBC, in beautiful, downtown Burbank. Life is as it should be, God is in his heaven and all is right with the world. There will still be grumblings, after all, you are everything that a good American should want to be: rich, successful, popular and (I mean this in the most manly and non-sexual way) attractive. There will always be those who will want to bring down a celebrity, a hero.  I hate that.

Sincerely,

Jon Batson

Government-mandated parity of mental and physical ailments for insurance coverage is a back-door route to nationalized health care. Special interests have been pushing government to implement parity for years and on January 29, the Obama Administration acquiesced. Health plans will henceforth be required to provide (not merely “offer”) mental-health benefits that contain no zingers, such as separate annual deductibles or lesser rates for psychiatrists and social workers.  Instead, according to Andrew Sperling of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), health insurers will be obliged to give the same level of coverage for treatment of emotional angst “as they do for cancer, diabetes and heart disease.”

Mental health has morphed into a cottage industry with scores of advocating organizations and lobbyists — NAMI, the American Psychiatric Association, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders (CHADD), the National Education Association and, of course, pharmaceutical companies. Industry bigwigs have repeatedly insisted that mental-health issues are no different than physical illnesses. The problem is that one cannot verify a mental illness — not with an X-ray, a blood test, a urinalysis or by any other means. Unlike brain injuries, Alzheimer’s and other clear-cut brain impairments due to strokes, high fevers and birth defects, mental illness per se is purely subjective. Perhaps someday researchers will discover issues at the cellular level that definitively cause a certain subset of behaviors, or which exacerbate stress, but at the moment they cannot. So it is no wonder that the various medications and therapies directed at curing, or even alleviating, emotional distress have virtually no track record of success.

In fact, many are suspected of doing harm, as reflected in the increasing number of “black box” warning labels, both on drug packaging and in TV advertisements. Amazingly, the mental health industry has managed to exempt itself from charges of complicity and fraud.  Worse, it has inserted itself into every aspect of our lives and repeated its claims to the point where they are viewed as unassailable — so much so that it actually fuels political-correctness. Unsurprisingly, the Obama Administration has failed to address the problem; seats on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a post-9/11 entity aimed at safeguarding Americans against politically motivated intrusiveness, remain unfilled.

Parents fear charges of negligence when they refuse to place toddlers on psychiatric cocktails; the criminal “justice” system recycles thousands of violent criminals back into society at the hands of mental health therapists; hundreds of thousands of citizens are left permanently harmed, thanks to the inevitable side-effects of psychotropic substances that fail to alleviate their symptoms anyway.

Nevertheless, advertisers hawk products that purportedly lessen emotional distress by increasing or blocking serotonin levels. But they never say how much serotonin is too much, how much is not enough, or how much is just right.

It’s enough to make one crazy; indeed, several therapies and drugs are doing just that!  Psychotropic drugs are suspected of being complicit in suicides, hyper-aggressive acts and other bizarre behaviors that have recently rocked the nation.

(More on this later)

Feb 2, 2010

NC is iced in with snow on the ground and freezing rain due later today. I received this from Beverly:

Something else just came up:  Last night I was called by someone high up in the Tea Party movement.  They apparently want to form a real alternative party, complete with platform and litmus test for candidates.  Well, they’d already sent me the substance, but the wording and format was bloody awful, as though it were worded by someone who had no clue as to protocol or political experience.  I told them so, rather bluntly, and they called back commissioning me to whip it into shape!!  At first I said no, but then relented ($$, after all), so now I’m really behind the 8-ball.  I think I hae a magazine and possibly a newspaper that would want to be first to publish it down the road when complete and approved.

I told her to keep a record of everything that happens and we'll write a book.

Then she sent me this:

People are sick of both political parties and shouting at each other, even as they grovel before outrageous government mandates and cower in political correctness, afraid to “offend” and lose status.  Oh, my…  How can we hope to untangle such a mess?  Fortunately, there’s a way out.  Read Beverly Eakman’s new article, just posted, on “Saving Civil Society and a Culture of Merit” at:  http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/culture/family/2846-saving-civil-society-and-a-culture-of-merit .

In a time of political unrest, we elected a savior, who promised change in Washington and then put in members of an old regime. He promised health care and has been trying to force-feed us with a bulky and impossible system. He promised a way out of the financial mess, and gave us more bail-outs, more debt and more fat cats getting fatter. He said he would hear us and turned a deaf ear to out pleas.

The prior leader took us to war almost immediately after a disaster of world-changing proportions. That event has been under a great deal of fire with accusations of being staged to create a situation wherein the president could garner more power. The troubling thing about these accusations is that, instead of being totally outrageous, utterly unbelievable, they are plausible and worthy of our attention. If such an event had been staged, it is an act of criminality unheard of since – no, I don't think there is a 'since.'

Do I believe that a government, which is made up of people, after all, is capable of such evil? Is a government of ambitious men and women – not to discriminate – capable of ambushing a president and blaming it on some poor ne'er-do-well? Are there men capable of pressing a button and blowing up a space shuttle? If the many emails, blogs and even videos on the Internet are correct, there are men capable of evil who would bring down the World Trade towers, would sabotage the Pentagon and would bring down a plane in a field, killing everyone involved?

Before that time, I had never heard the name “Osama Bin Ladin”, had never heard of the Taliban and never thought of Afghanistan. Perhaps I was living in a back yard bomb shelter left over from the 1950s.

Before 2007, I had never heard of Barack Obama. Before November, 2008, his candidacy had “nothing to do with race.” It's not about race, we were told. After all, he's half-white. Think of the white half. He was raised by his grandmother, so his parents technically don't count. Nor, apparently, did his nationality, his religion or his friends. But I'm not going to open up all those cans of worms and go through them again. Suffice to say that after the election, it was all about race. It's all about race, we were told. After all, it's time a black man was president. He was raised by his grandmother, so there really is no white person in his family or in his life. Even his minister is black. Oh! Oops! Scratch that. Let's never mention him again. And no, he's not a Muslim, though he loves them and wants them to be part of America's history from the very start.

Well, as long as America lasts. It was, after all, the last president, GWB, who signed the North American Treaty, eliminating the United States – and the Dollar, in favor of the Amero.

So with out country slipping down the drain fast, I expect an American back-lash. Right on time, the Tea Party came along. There was a march on Washington in 2009. You didn't hear about it because the popular press didn't cover it. Only Fox News and online sites covered it. The actual Tea Party events were hushed up as much as possible. But they gave birth to a movement, the Tea Party Movement.

It's only February and already there is a site selling Tea Party wrist bands with slogans on them and tea-shirts (get it?) and caps promising a “judgment day” in November, 2010. The New Yorker ran an article and there is some speculation online that the party will tear itself apart, split with internal differences. That only happens to well-established groups. CNN even reported that the movement was “threatened by internal rifts.” However, one point that is made is how very little squabbling is going on – less than expected.

The Brown victory in Massachusetts is said to be the first flurry of the party, though Brown ran as a Republican. (We're a republic, remember?) But if there are to be more, the Tea Party Party has to get it's act together. So Beverly was asked to rewrite their platform. With Beverly in there, I just might join, except that I already belong to more social media sites than I can keep updated. Besides, in my 2008 novel, Deadly Research, I suggested that many such sites have membership lists just so the people behind the site, the group being protested against, will have a list of dissenters. I'm sure I'm already on several such lists, but why temp fate?

What's the answer? Read everything, stay sharp, become informed and most of all, vote against the usual party line – our only hope of getting our country back is by voting out the old guard, even under the guise of “Change we can believe in.”

Blogs! They're everywhere! And I am told I have to keep them up! And there is so much more that I have to keep up. But I digress.
I have a blog for Midnight Whistler at http://midnightwhistler.blogspot.com, one for me at http://jonbatson.blogspot.com, three at MySpace.com at "jonbatson," "jonbatson_author" and "jonbatsonmusic."
Earlier this year, I put short stories up, ending with the Powder Monkey of Cape Fear. However, I got very few comments - it was clear no one was reading.
This coming year, I am going to send all the blogs to this site and put up what I want to say here. If no one is reading, at least I am updating only one site.
So that's my New Year's Resolution, to funnel all my many blogs down to one site - here.
If you're reading it, let me know. I'll feel better and who knows, you might feel better too.
Have a Happy Holiday Season and a very sa