Coming to grips

Chris Hayes of Stella Crew recently graduated from the police cadet academy. T. Justin Chapman of 409 Northerners is soon to become a lawyer.

These events force me to face the fact that my friends are becoming everything I stood against as a teenager.

Anyone brought up in the NWA generation at some point probably shared my opinion of police officers in high school. Anyone brought up in the Johnny Cochrane era probably sees where I'm coming from in my distaste for lawyers.

You know how it goes. I'm not breaking new ground here.

Obviously it doesn't change my personal feelings toward my friends at all. I still like and respect Chris and Justin as much as ever. But it's kind of funny because I used to wonder, watching those scenes from the 1960s of anti-government protesters and hippies: What happened when they grew up? What happened when they had to support a family and realized capitalism may not be the best system, but it's necessary if you want to feed your kids? What did they do when they discovered a Democratic president could lead us into an unwinnable war in Vietnam, but a Republican president could keep us there?

Maybe those people never faced the music and that's why the current generation of children, their children, seems to have more psychological and emotional issues than any before it. But I'm hardly qualified to get into that.

I, too, am in a profession many people do not find honorable. I understand that. Many people form their negative opinions of the press from a few cases of abhorrent behavior by reporters and the media. To be fair, that's most likely where I formed my opinions of lawyers and law enforcement. Here I see a lot of paralells, and the more I understand them, the more I've come to soften my opinion.

Police, lawyers and "The Media" might be the most cursed generalities in American society. People hate them without really knowing why they hate them. Although greater than 99 percent of police officers, prison guards, sherriff's deputies, public defenders, defense attorneys, attorneys general, field reporters, desk anchors, cameramen and photographers are excellent at their jobs and perform a pivotal public service, that fewer than 1 percent sways the general public into complaining that members of those groups are corrupt or downright evil.

Ask John Q. Public if he'd rather live in a world without police, lawyers or reporters, however, and I'm pretty sure he'd turn it down. I know I would.

So that's it. I'm extremely proud of Chris earning the right to wear the uniform. I'm sure I'll be proud of Justin putting bad guys behind bars (or keeping innocent ones free, whichever one he does). And I hope a few people are proud of the work I do.

Even if I am a blood-sucking muckraker.