Character in Abundance.

Even Hitler didn't wake up going, "let me do the most evil thing I can do today." I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was "good."

No wonder people misinterpreted Will Smith's quite clear statement about Hitler's self-deception. There's plenty of evidence in the day's news that Hitler wasn't the only one who has trouble seeing his own wrongdoing.

*****

Kyle Okposo left the University of Minnesota hockey team in mid-season to join the New York Islanders. Said the Islanders general manager, Garth Snow: "Kyle is the complete package. He has skill and character in abundance."

Just not in immediate evidence.

You may be forgiven for imagining Okposo was a college student before he quit on his teammates, but this quote from Snow should set you straight. The Islanders had sent Okposo to trade school, and they yanked him:

"They have a responsibility to coach, to make Kyle a better player, and they were not doing that," Snow told the Star Tribune. "He just wasn't getting better — bottom line. And to me, that's the frustrating part. We entrusted the coach there to turn him into a better hockey player, and it wasn't happening. We feel more comfortable in him developing right under our watch."

*****
It will shock those who know me to learn I have never made a mistake, at least by this measure:

Both the Ransavages and Campbells acknowledge the drunken-driving offenses were serious mistakes and they are glad the government is trying to keep adopted children safe. But both say they were one-time mistakes. Neither has any other criminal record.

A story in the same edition of the Strib would seem to differ:

Mothers Against Drunk Driving said research shows that an impaired driver doesn't get pulled over until at least his or her 50th time — and that figure is low, said Steve Simon, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who heads a state task force on drunken-driving laws.

*****

[Mario Augustin Lewis, whose indoor marijuana-growing operation provided the first clues in the mortgage fraud case] a former real estate agent at LHS Mortgage, apologized for his crimes, although he insisted that he was never out to hurt anyone, including the lenders who financed the nine houses he bought with proceeds from the fraud.

Lewis overstated the purchase price of homes and pocketed more than $430,000 in the fraud.

*****

[The mother of Joseph McEnroe, who helped kill six family members of Christmas Eve] told The Seattle Times that her eldest son was a "good Christian" and she was shocked he had been arrested in the slayings.

*****

For his part, Meshbesher noted outside the courtroom that he knows Antrim's family and that he still is learning the details of the case, but that it appears that the alleged sexual contact [between a girl's hockey coach and a 16-year-old player] was "consensual."

*****

[A school employee fired for failing to maintain appropriate boundaries while discussion sexual orientation with student] insists that his run for the school board wasn't vindictive. He told the Star Tribune this fall that he had always wanted to be on the board but couldn't run as a district employee. He ran on a fiscally conservative platform.

*****

A council member who "has a history of discussing his girlfriend and his personal matters with employees at the city" also likes to hand out unsolicited relationship advice.

Mengelkoch said she found it "weird" and was disturbed that a man she barely knew would talk to her about his sex life — especially at a fundraiser for a youth ambassador program at which half the attendees were minors.

"I'm 20. He's old," she said. "It's a little on the creepy side."

Schaffer, 68, acknowledged having spoken inappropriately but said it was a mistake. "I volunteered too much information. I didn't say anything in a crass or coarse way," he said.

Schaffer said he was offering "fatherly" relationship advice that was intimate but not graphic. He told Mengelkoch about how his girlfriend had asked him to make love to her and how he had then told his girlfriend that he would not do so unless they were exclusive.

"I made [Mengelkoch] uncomfortable, and I didn't pick up on it right away," he said. "Like a lot of dumb older men, I just fell into being too honest."

Comments

[serns]

People see their own wrongdoing and do it anyway. Even if Hitler may have started off believing he was doing his thing for the greater good, at some point (IMO) it turned into self-protection and power. That's what guilt's all about, and part of why religion is effective ("we're all sinners," etc). Some people rationalize a little better than others, though. Anyways, all by himself, Hitler couldn't have done what he did.

[serns]

Also, I saw the Dalai Lama at the Women's Conference in Long Beach the other year. He said something like: Everyone is basically human. You don't/can't/shouldn't reject them from humanity just for doing terrible things. But it may be necessary to lock them up, to keep them from doing more of them.

So I guess rather than "everyone is basically good," (what Will Smith maybe thinks) it's more like "everyone rates love and possibly forgiveness, no matter what they do." Someone who's just a tad more cynical than I am might argue the Dalai Lama's kind of in a bubble though.