welcome home

i returned to stamford this evening, completing the first leg of my epic thanksgiving journey. tomorrow afternoon we're leaving for the 12 hour drive to hampstead, nc, which is about 30 minutes north of wilmington.

but before i depart, wouldn't you just love an update on the goings on in stamford? here's a fun story. how cliche is this?

stamford mayor's son enters drug rehab"

what's especially ironic about this piece of news is that it broke days after my brother announced in the car with my parents that he knew for a fact that the mayor's son was a drug dealer. high school kids always know all the gossip don't they?

when i did a search on our local paper's website i also found this article, a letter to the editor asking if the coverage of the mayor's son's arrest would have been so intense had he not been the mayor's son.

i think i speak for all journalists, and readers of perez hilton, when i say .... duh. of course not! famous people and the boring things they do are only interesting because they are famous. would we have cared if britney got her kids taken away if she wasn't once a teen pop idol with a current top selling cd?

sadly, in a small suburban town where the mayor's family is one of the biggest and most powerful in the county, they become local celebrities. and if the mayor's kids, can't keep their noses clean, they should be splashed across the front page. and you know, they are probably dealing with drug problems and all the rest because of their role in the public eye. and the related feelings of entitlement and invincability are most likely a product of that, too.

and what do you know? a 19-year-old boy is arrested after being investigated by local police for dealing drugs, and instead of being hog tied and placed in lock down, he's quietly placed in a rehab center. arrested the day after election day by police from a neighboring town. do you think that is a coincidence?

my thought is this: if you're going to use your families' power to manipulate the justice system, then you can deal with a little bad press.