Curiosity got the best of me. I turned on Kid Nation – 40 children being sacrificed for money, TV ratings, and celebrity.

I thought it might be entertaining. Instead my heart ached. Those children were suffering, shedding tears. They looked terrorized. They were scared, homesick, insecure, and dirty.

There was only one outhouse for 40 kids to use the bathroom. The torturer (who called himself a “host”) said that the kids had won a prize and that the kid leaders had to decide between a TV set or 6 additional outhouses.

Many of the children were tormented that their kid leaders would choose the TV instead of the outhouses and leave them having to wait hours to use the toilet. After 10 minutes of this child abuse, I could stand no more!

Has kiddie Guantanamo Bay moved into prime time? Why fight Ben Laden when we ourselves are terrorizing American children for our viewing pleasure?

Americans, please do not participate in sacrificing our children’s emotional and mental health on the altar of entertainment. Turn off Kid Nation!

I woke up in the middle of the night recently and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I decided to try Jeff Fisher’s coaching style and see if if would work for me.

Jeff Fisher comes up with a good, solid game plan. Then he consistently sticks with it whether it seems to be working or not.

My game plan last night was to say an affirmation over and over in my mind until I fell back to sleep. I choose the words: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mery on me a sinner,” and began to repeat them in my head. (You can choose whatever words you want if you decide to try my plan.)

After about 20 minutes my get-back-to-sleep-game-plan wasn’t working and I was getting rather frustrated. I started to give up and get out of bed. But instead, I stayed with my game plan just like Jeff Fisher does on the NFL sidelines.

The next thing I knew, my alarm went off the next morning.

Nashville has a Dr. Ming Wang Vision Institute. It helps people to see better through ground breaking laser eye surgery.

Perhaps Nashville also needs a Dr. Sing Twang Nasal Institute. Dr. Sing Twang could do twang-making laser nasal surgery on Nashville’s Country superstars and create a revival of that old-time Opry sound.

Since Randy Travis switched over to Gospel, that old-time nasal twang seems to have left Country. Now I enjoy a lot of our contemporary Nashville sound, but when you are listening to Country Radio, “it just don’t seem right” not to hear some down home twang every now and then.

Maybe Dr. Sing Twang could work on just one nostril of each famous Country singer. That way the Nashville star could switch back and forth between contemporary Country and old-time nasal Country at will — maybe even in the same song. Think how much bigger that would make his or her career! “Don’t it give you goose bumps” just to think about it?

For some reason, I feel like I need to blow my nose.

I have frequently been told that I am copy paper complected. Even the government tells me that. My driver’s license and my birth certificate both say that I am copy paper complected. But when I look in the mirror, I don’t see it.

I am kind of like President Bush in this. Every time I fill out a form, I am expected to write down a ”Dubya” for “white.”

I have some friends who are frequently told that they are ink complected. Even their driver’s licenses and birth certificates tell them that. Although they have been labeled with a “B,” they don’t look like ink to me.

Isn’t it time that we dropped the goofy idea that there are “white” people and “black” people on planet earth? I have never seen a copy paper complected person or an ink complected person. Have you?

50 years ago I was a six-year-old in Little Rock, Arkansas. And I had a lot of company there as members of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division joined us in the city. At the time I didn’t really understand what was going on; why the “army” was in our town to help some teenagers go to school.

I remember that the American troops weren’t as fondly spoken of around the South for being in 1957 Arkansas as they are for being in 2007 Iraq. But isn’t oppression oppression?

I didn’t know that there had been 338 years of vicious cruelty and hatred in our country toward people with dark complexions by people with light complexions like me. I used to see a tiny bit of that oppression when I was in a downtown department store with my mother. I loved to ride the escalator (yes, we had one in Arkansas), but I was confused by the “White” and “Colored” signs on the water fountains and bath rooms. Why would the government (the Jim Crow laws) make people drink from separate water fountains in a land that talked so much about freedom?

It’s seems odd now, but I didn’t know any black people in Little Rock. I lived at 3724 West 21st and was in the first grade at Garland (”White” only) Elementary School. My father’s job put him somewhat in the middle of the integration conflict. He worked for KVLC Radio and did several news reports from Central High School.

Well, Central High School was successfully integrated by the Little Rock Nine and the Army, but I never saw a black person in Garland School or Meadowcliff School (I moved after 4th grade). Today, the Little Rock school district is 70% black.

One of the Little Rock Nine, Terrence Roberts, who is now a faculty member in the psychology program at Antioch University in Los Angeles, recently said: “This country has demonstrated over time that it is not prepared to operate as an integrated society.”

My observations agree with Terrence. It is so sad that still, after 50 years, skin complexion continues to matter in the land that proudly proclaims itself to believe that “all men are created equal” and in “liberty and justice for all.”