With the Compassion of Sandpaper

 Originally posted 4/24/11 on another site


One part of my ‘re-booting' program: after sleeping, eating and popping vitamins, is reading. Think about it: you're replenishing the body, shouldn't the mind follow? (Nourishing the soul is a subject for another time).
I don't infer you attack The Wall Street Journal or Nietzsche in the original German either. As with most passions, I'm voracious....lists and phone directories give me a woody. As a writer and a human (yes, me) I get hot under the collar when the reporting is glaringly inept.

Granted, it was STAR magazine, and the unflattering Lindsay Lohan cover photo hooked me just as intended. I did not buy a copy, opting to read about LL in NEWSWEEK (now edited by Tina Brown, which shatters the illusion I'm a closet high-brow).
I've seen Ms. Lohan twice; at my breakfast hang-out during her lesbian period and looking frail, and last November, alighting from a car and looking fantabulous. I truly hope she recognizes her troubles as opportunities, since I empathize with her situation, and am about the same age as her so-called parents (an internet article entitled Dina Lohan Slammed by Producer made me curious as to cyanide's liquidity with saline or hot water).

My beef boils down to two quotes.  "She'll be an addict all her life," says the 'source' who got paid for his uncanny insight. Anyone who's been there and is addicted knows that addiction is a life-long battle so let's not demonize it.
As I often say, my addictions include Lipton iced tea, Tex-Mex dinners, Art Deco architecture, French bulldogs and...bad writing. (Kidding on the writing assessment)  Addiction is my cross to bear and how I do, or don't shoulder it well is my journey. The other pearl of wisdom I gleaned and I paraphrase, "Some days she's serious about her recovery, and other days not at all." I suppose that could mean LL, like all of us, has her ‘good days and bad days' which sounds a little more caring.

I was surfing Cam4 last Sunday and happened to land on a popular page...and noticed one half of a duo needed to be burped and put to bed.
The viewers were made up of two camps: clueless as to why he looked ‘as if he'd been drugged' and judgmental as only those with something to really hide can. I chimed in with an appeal for compassion, and promptly put myself in the hot seat.  WHY? I was asked. In a rare display of brevity I answered, "Why not?"