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It didn't take long for the haters to latch on to the Baltimore riots. Latest exciting "news": Freddie Gray, the man whose spine was 80% cut after an arrest, tried to sever his own spine! Supposedly, according to a statement from an *unnamed* prisoner riding with Freddy to an "unnamed* police officer, Gray was trying to injure himself while shackled and handcuffed. Another rumor: Freddy had spinal surgery a week before the attack -- that's why his spine was severed -- he did it to himself!.

Unbelievable.

While it's unclear exactly how Freddy's spine was damaged, could we stop insulted people's intelligence by claiming he was responsible for his own maiming?

Geez.

Sister Act

I am thrilled that the Vatican investigation into the supposed wrongdoings of the LCWR -- Leadership Conference of Women Religious -- nuns, to you and me -- has been brought to a conclusion two years early. This witch hunt, started under Pope Benedict XVI, has been a disaster for the Church's image.Who  is more aligned with the gospels and the Church's mission than the selfless women ministering to the poor, teaching kids and healing the sick? But because of a couple of challenging speakers at a conference a few years ago, they were interrogated and given a man to oversee their affairs. No more clear sign could be had of the Church's continued need to subordinate its women and harassment its most ardent supporters.

It was troublesome that Pope Francis, elected two years ago, did not bring the matter immediately to a halt. No doubt he had to get the lay of the land and figure out the power structure before he made a move. But this scandal -- the persecution of devoted, intelligent and articulate women -- had to be dealt with eventually. Now it has been.

An America article praised both sides for having engaged in prayerful, spirit-led dialogue that led to mutual understanding. But I see this as a fig leaf that gives the Vatican some cover for its former neo-patriarchal approach to solving the "problem" of the nuns. The LCWR has moved on, at least publicly. But there has to be lingering resentment of the shabby way they were treated. And they must wonder whether their victory has come at a cost. Will they be as willing in the future to invite viewpoints that challenge the verities of the male-dominated hierarchy? Has the Vatican "won" by showing that it is capable of slapping down its most loyal members (pleasing the conservatives) while also showing "mercy" (placating the progressives)? As with all cases of domestic abuse, l'affaire LCWR must leave psychological scars on the sisters, and a lingering fear of the abuser who says he's so sorry and won't do it again.

Yellow is the new black

For anyone hoping for the lighthearted source of the recent TV series, look elsewhere. Eddie Huang's "Fresh off the Boat" is the often harrowing story of a young Taiwanese immigrant trying to fit into American culture. Turned off by the standard way Asian immigrants make it in the US -- work hard, get good grades, do what your parents tell you -- Eddie dives headlong into street culture. He absorbs everything he can about hip hop, including its lingo and fashions. You can't read the book without having Urban Dictionary close to hand. Words and phrases like "shawties" (girls), "whip" (car), "for a minute" (for years) and "smash" (to have sex with) pepper every page. Though Huang is close to thirty, he writes like a rebellious fourteen-year-old street hustler.

Don't get me wrong. The book is super well-written and crazy exciting. The anecdotes-- violent, drug-addled and often misogynistic--are rich and layered. Huang's sketch of the angry dynamics of his newly-arrived family are perfect and memorable. As is his grasp of the tensions tearing at someone of a different race trying to fit in. But meseems that Huang protesteth too much. He is too anxious to sell himself as the only "real" person in a vast sea of sellouts. I felt at times that this was as much about selling seats in his restaurant as it was to exposing his life's story. Huang seems trapped by his street persona in much the same way he might have been trapped by the vapid, upwardly mobile Asians he mocks.

There is a great deal that I abhor about Huang's attitude -- his never-ending rebellion against propriety (with MFs too numerous to count) and his celebration of drugs (pot is one thing, but freebasing? Really?) -- to make his book an easy recommendation. But it gave insight into the way that at least some immigrants react to the stultifying pressures of American culture, and the desire to succeed on one's own terms.

Plane Crazy?

The Australian and Malaysian governments, having already spent 94 million dollars searching for lost flight MH370, are planning to spend another $39 million if the plane isn't found by May.With all respect and sympathy to those who lost loved ones, why is it so easy to spend money on the dead but not on the living? Why do matters of pride (national honor, a business's need to get its assets off the sea floor, the need to solve a mystery) so often trump matters of heart (feeding the hungry, educating the ignorant and building infrastructure)?

The small print of the Third Reich

Micro-history uses the close study of a tiny slice of events to shed light on larger themes. "Hitler's First Victims" takes us to the years just before WWII to study the establishment and running of Dachau, a camp outside of Munich used to concentrate, control and punish political dissidents.

It was a time when the rule of law, as practiced by the book's hero, Bavarian prosecutor Josef Hartinger, was almost perfectly balanced with the ruthless, lawless "justice" (i.e., brutality, arbitrariness and terror) that was the Nazi's stock in trade. It was a time when a concentration camp "suicide" might actually be investigated by local authorities, and perpetrators at least threatened credibly with punishment. Watching the defenders of the old systems be outmaneuvered by the likes of Josef Himmler (then in charge of police in Munich) or slowly knuckle under to the vicious new realities was to see ordinary people silently assenting, via opting for the own survival, with the Nazi's murder machine.

"Hitler's First Victims" gives a glimpse into the machinations of Hitler as he attempted to wrest total power from president Hindenburg. The road to the Third Reich was made of such grand scheming as well as the petty and seemingly insignificant murder of a few local dissidents in the grip of an barbarous prion commandant.

A story brilliantly researched and quite clearly told.