Hildegarde

Well, nights really.

Greg and I like to watch political opinion shows, and at eight at night, right before I go to be, we watch either Keith Olbermann or Bill O’Reilly, depending on three factors:  who is likely to have the funniest take on the story of the moment; whether we’re presently annoyed at  Republicans or Democrats more; and whether either of them is off for the evening and being covered by a host substitute we don’t like.

That last one is the deal breaker.   O’Reilly tends to be subbed by a right wing blonde named Laura Ingraham, and I find her more annoying than any other human being in politics except for Nancy Pelosi.  Olbermann’s sub tends to be this bland, sort of not very exciting person who ends up sounding very odd, because the writers are still delivering scripts that are written to Olbermann’s style, and, um..

We’ve been watching more O’Reilly than Olbermann late, since Olbermann’s father is very ill and he’s been taking a lot of time off, but last night, both of them were off.   Greg and  bounced around a bit trying to see if there was anything worth putting up with the sub hosts for, and as there wasn’t, we ended up where we sometimes do these days:  at a show called Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader, hosted by Jeff Foxworthy on–wait for it–CMT, Country  Music Television.

For those of you who are actually interesting in hearing country music, you should know that most of the music is on another country cable station, called GAC (Great American Country).  CMT, which seems to be owned by the same people who own VH-1, is mostly, you know, shows.  World’s Strictest Parents.  Extreme Home Make-over. That kind of thing.

At any rate, we got to thise particular episode of Fifth Grader late, and we found ourselves staring at a young woman who teaches seventh grade world history in the Teach for America program. 

The way the game works is this:  there are two questions from each grade, one through five, up on the board.  Each is worth a specific amount of money, and if you get one right you get that amount of money, and if youget one wrong you get that amount subtractred. 

The young woman had managed to screw up the game to the point that she had ended with exactly $2000 as she entered the bonus round–out of a possible $25,000.  She now had the choice of either taking that money and going home, or taking the bonus question.   If she answered that question correctly, her money was multiplied by ten.   If she answered it incorrectly, it was eliminated, but she got the consolation prize of a pre-paid Visa card with $2500 on it.

Apparently, she could count.   Which was good.  Because the bonus question was in the category of fifth grade American History, and things were about to get ugly.

Her parents were in the audience right behind her.  Every once in a while the camera would pan back to them, and her m other looked like she was in pain.

Here was the questiong:  who was President when the last of the states joined the Union?

I don’t think that was the exact phrasing, but it was the question. 

The yoyung woman stood there and said, “I can’t remember when the last few states joined the country, but I’m pretty sure it was in the mid-1800s, so I’m going to say–John Adams?”

I really don’t make these things up.  I couldn’t make them up.  I barely believe them when I see them.

Believe it or not, this was on my mind for the past few hours because it reminded me of that discussion about process and outcome in the criminal justice system.  Robert has expressed the opinion that the only reason anybody ever goes to jail is because he doesn’t have the money to fight forever, since the process is so stacked against conviction by n ow we’d never convict anybody with adequate resources to fight.

I don’t agree–I mean, I really don’t agree–but I know something else about the justice system, and that is that the vast majority of cases never go to trial.  That’s not because the accused doesn’t have enough money for good lawyers.  Even most rich defendants plead out.

It’s because the vast majority of crimnals make that woman on Fifth Grader look like Einstein. 

And that’s true even when these people seem to be smart enough in their everyday lives.  If you don’t believe me, think about that NBC show To Catch A Predator.  That show has been on for years, and guys are still driving up to those suburban houses in SUVs, armed with sex toys and videotapes–and then being shocked as hell that the whole thing is a sting.

The other reason most criminals plead out is that any good defense attorny knows that most juries lean towards conviction–after all, if he wasn’t guilty, why was he arrested?  And they’re hypersensitive to the idea that “smart laywers” get guilty people off by confusing everybody.

That’s how a substitute teacher in a Connecticut public school got sentenced to ten years in prison and a place on the sex offender registry after ner classroom computer started spewing out porn while she was using it in a demonstration.  A computer can be hit by a virus that  makes it throw up porn images and the person using the computer can’t stop it?  Yeah, right.  If that was possible, we wouldn’t be having this trial!

Juries like to convict.  They tend to think police officers and prosecutors are automatically more reliable than defense lawyers and witnesses.  That’s why when they don’t know somsething–like how a computer virus works–they take the prosecution’s explanation over that tof the defense, even when the defense is right.

Fortunately for the young woman in the case above, the appeal was heard by a judge who did now something about computers, and he threw the case out, voided the verdict and had a screaming fit at the prosecution, but her life is likely to be largely screwed up permanently.

I am not the kind of person who thinks that all police officers and prosecutors are corrupt and care only about getting their arest and convict records up as high as possible.  I know that the Ray Nifongs of this world are blessedly rare.

But I also know that Ben Franklin was wrong.  The only things certain in this world are n ot death and taxes.   There is also human ignorance and stupidity, of which we havee a supply so vast that if we could figure out how to run cars on it, we could give ever man, woman, child and flea their own personal Volkswagen to run for free.

But then, if I’d been on the OJ jury, I’d have voted to acquit–and not because of anything OJ’s lawyers did or did not do.