It’s a Mann’s World

Soon this will be up and running…

-E.

Welcome to my occasional reader, who must be going through convulsions after my latest vacation from blogging. Whoops ! I just spilled my sarcasm shake all over the computer. Sorry for that.

Honestly, a lot has changed in the last three days.

I got a new bed. I moved to an entirely different city where I know about two people (my roommate, who works all kinds of hours that can only be matched by a speed freak and his older brother). I woke up yesterday and thought I was in my room senior year of college for half of a second. I can now watch every single major league baseball game in high definition (only for another free week). Oh, and I started a new job.

In rare fashion, I’ll actually talk about my private life for once (I never intended this site to be, “Why Elliot Mann really likes cheese curds”). I made the decision awhile ago that I would continue in my profession because that is what I was destined to do. After interviewing for several jobs during the last two years – some great, some only with a better salary – I ended up with the best one I went after. I’m not sure how it ended up that way. Regardless, it reminds me of Rob Gordon talking about trying to get to third base:

Sometimes I got so bored of trying to touch her breast that I would try to touch her between her legs. It was like trying to borrow a dollar, getting turned down, and asking for 50 grand instead

Except that’s what I feel like happened. I asked for a dollar from a bunch of people and they all said, “Get a job hippie!” Then I asked this company for $50,000 and they seemed glad to do so. Things in my life don’t necessarily happen “the regular way” though, so I shouldn’t seem that surprised. Maybe I’m just giddy because I can’t wait to get started and I know that if I bust my ass, great things can happen. It’s a funny thing, ambition.

When I enter (insert new company here), I’m anxious, nervous, fidgety like a new kid in school, or how it always felt during basketball try-outs. I’m sure you’ve been there before; either at a theater, choir or spelling bee try-out. While everyone mulls around like a crowd of sheep, nerves run high, each kid looking at those close by to see how they’re able to keep calm. You just want to actually play basketball or read your lines - the one place you feel comfortable, to show your skills and prove you belong.

That’s how I feel in the newsroom. I actually start smiling like a got-damn fool in excitement of starting my beat and going to meetings and interviewing people. Someone actually told me they would be checking the ergonomics of my desk. Really? Checking the placement of my chair? Reviewing the height of my monitor? At my old job that would have consisted of putting a thicker phone book under the screen.

Yeah, I’m actually pining for the next school board meeting. I don’t think anyone has that listed on their E-Harmony or match.com profiles.

I’ll always have a spot in my heart for my previous newspaper and that city. I met great people who turned into unforgettable friends. But as my roommate asked me today, “How was the first day of the rest of your life?,” an answer came easily.

Can’t wait for tomorrow.

Elliot writes for a daily newspaper, assuming he finishes orientation. Contact him here.

Somewhere buried under the headlines of the great March snow-pocalypse, sits news about Sara Jane Olson being released from prison.

The mature public will remember Olson from her actions in 1970s, when she participated in a deadly California bank robbery and the attempted bombing of Los Angeles police cars as a member of the urban terrorists who dubbed themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army. Known then as Kathleen Soliah, she went on the lam for several years after those crimes, taking a new name and according to the Star Tribune, reinvented herself as a housewife, DFL activist and a community theater actress.

In 2001, Olson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years in prison for attempting to bomb Los Angeles police cars in 1975, and Olson later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 1975 shooting death of a customer during a bank robbery in Carmichael, Calif. A year later, her sentenced was reduced. And now Thursday, she’s free.

Wait… what?!!

In the middle of a growing “War on Terror” and only a few years into a what should have been a lengthy prison sentence, Olson is free to cavort with her family and friends. Olson is a victim of privilege, a rebel without clue, cause or concern for her actions. Maybe she’ll write a second edition to her cookbook “Serving Time: America’s Most Wanted Recipes.” (She was apprehended due to an America’s Most Wanted tip.) Maybe Olson will resume her political career. Maybe she’ll get to watch her children grow up.

But while she resumes her life, a church worker and mother of four still sits buried in a California cemetery.

Myrna Opsahl, who made the mistake of going to the bank, is dead. She will never get to see her first grandchild, or even attend the weddings of her children. She has yet to have the chance to write a cutesy cookbook, either.

Is this the new American Dream? Kill an innocent person in cold blood and serve less than 10 years? Write a “funny” little cookbook to capitalize on your notoriety?

Sara Jane Olson should be walking out of prison — I wholeheartedly agree to that. But it should be straight into U.S. Naval care so they can dump her in another country. According to one of Olson’s cronies, the now-free terrorist also kicked a pregnant teller in the abdomen which resulted in a miscarriage.

We seem so concerned about the battle abroad, but maybe we should take a deeper look at our own. America is a great country because we have the ability to seek change without using bloodthirsty tactics, because we are able to debate our political and ethical concerns. We shouldn’t have to worry about taking five slugs in the chest when we drop off our payroll check because some half-brained “political organization” is trying to make a name for themselves.

America has no place for people like Sara Jane Olson and her former SLA comrades, who started out in present-day, Marine-bashing Berkeley, Calif. Apprently they haven’t changed much there, either.

Olson should be tried for treason in her assistance to the enemy of all Americans: ruthless thugs who needlessly toss away valuable and innocent U.S. lives.

Why should Sara Jane Olson get a chance at parole and life as an American citizen? Myrna Opsahl doesn’t.

Elliot writes for a daily newspaper and also frequently at elliotmann.org. He believes people should question the government, but abhors when people mistake that ability with violence against everyday citizens. Contact him here.

Additional reading: Star Tribune