I want to blow the horn for John Oliver, formerly from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, who now has his own show, “Last Week Tonight” on HBO. It premiered Sunday night, April 27th. He is a master satirist and I was blown away. Don’t miss him.

And I finally got my iPod synced and heard Terry Gross interview Hari Kondabolu, an innovative and hilariously funny comedian – born in Flushing to parents from India. He has a Masters degree in Human Rights from the London School of Economics, and was doing stand-up as a hobby when he became so successful it took over his life.

And on Monday night, I watched a documentary on the life and career of Ann Richards who rose to become governor of Texas. They have not since had a governor who has been so successful in rooting out corruption and favoritism, in lowering the crime rate through setting up drug programs in prisons and in being a champion for women’s rights and for minorities. She was twice the keynote speaker at the Democratic convention – the first time for Dukakis and then for Bill Clinton. She died in 2006 of esophageal cancer. Progressives have lost a great leader. While she was in her heyday I was not as focused on the political scene as I am today, so I missed out on a lot of the stories about her.

On a separate issue, actors from the TV series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit have made a commercial hoping to raise public awareness of violence, domestic and otherwise. The actors appear sequentially voicing typical excuses for violence, “she deserved it,” “he was drunk,” etc.

Acknowledging that a victim should not be held responsible for a bad thing happening, there is still a certain level of awareness that should become part of everyone’s arsenal. Learn the dangers, don’t put yourself in harm’s way. It is unrealistic not to change behavior that is an invitation to the morally depraved. There is a cliché remark “She was asking for it.” No one asks to be raped but getting drunk and going home with the wrong guy is just not smart. Now that may require more sophistication than some teens have, so it really is up to parents to educate their teens about what is out there and, hopefully, to do it without clichés and homilies. Nothing turns a teen off faster than unctuous pronouncements.


Then there is the underlying mental conditioning that leads to being attracted to the wrong person. (Been there, done that.) Years ago, I had a friend who was in a mental health support group. She learned about herself that if she was at a party and saw “across the room” a guy she HAD TO GET TO KNOW, that in all probability he was violent and abusive. She had to aggressively address her attraction to this kind of person, learn to recognize it, and train herself to appreciate a different kind of guy.

And here is a story about her that I just love. She asked me to get her the personal contact information for an author she had been reading – she knew they were meant for each other. I knew the subsidiary rights guy in my company could find out, so I asked him. He refused, thinking it unethical. Anyway, it turned out this author was going to be in town for a book signing event. My friend went to it, she walked up to the author and wham, bam, alacazam. They left together, she moved in, and they got married. Later, the author died. I haven’t been able to locate my friend ‘though I have tried.

xx, Teal