In God's Image

For as long as I can remember, people were supposed to be "good" -- they were supposed to do right by one another, they were supposed to be courteous, and they were supposed to behave, at each turn, as if they were created in God's image.

Well, with the hindsight of 34+ years on this Earth, either that "in God's image" stuff is a load of bullshit, or God's image isn't exactly something for which we should strive to be made. Old ladies getting mugged for their social security checks, priests abusing young boys, war atrocities that make even seasoned veterans embarassed by the association, and Michael Jackson -- well, just incurring Michael Jackson's name is sufficient to conclude the point.

So, with that in mind, I set out to CNN.com, the website from which I get about a quarter of the news I absorb daily, hoping to find some good news or at least something about which I could glean a new perspective, idea or thought for the day. I don't have lofty expectations: at this point, truly, I'd settle for a news item proclaiming Paris Hilton and Dennis Rodman are having a love-child and that they will name the resultant offspring "Vidalia." In its stead, what does my browser encounter? A story about how a landlord in Elmhurst, a section of Queens, paid a hitman a pittance to go after two brothers who shared an apartment in his building. His goal? To "unofficially" evict the brothers, who occupied a $400-monthly rent-controlled building, in order to raise the rent for the next tenant(s) to $1,500 a month.

It's all right here in black, white and lots of pretty colors for your perusal if you're so inclined: http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/12/08/landlord.convicted.ap/index.html.

Now I can honestly say that, for the most part, the sole reason why I read this particular article was I am in the real estate tax business, so anything pertaining to rent, landlord-tenant relations and rent control/stabilization is my "field" -- so I tend to click first and ask questions later. In this case, however, the landlord in question -- 50-year-old Juan Basagoitia -- exemplifies something far beyond the typical "slumlord" moniker. He embodies the term "scumbag," and that is to say he gets a big thumbs-down from the great movie reviewer in the sky. According to his lawyer, Mr. Basagoitia simply wanted to scare the brothers in order to get them to leave, and "the plan spiraled out of control."

Isn't that always the way? You want to make more money in rent collection, and you know these two brothers are paying less than $5,000 annually -- for a lavish, three-bedroom pleasure palace, no less -- and you decide, over your meat loaf surprise and green-bean casserole one night, to raise their rent to $1,500 a month. So you hire another scumbag to give them a little scare, but the steadfast siblings stand their ground, and the next thing you know, you're indicted and facing life in prison when said scumbag whips out a knife and disfigures one of the tenants. I guess, next time, you'll consider just how much your tenants love living in your building prior to you bumping them off in the streets rather than legally evicting them.

And I think it's pretty clear that many among us are going to hell in a handbasket, toot sweet.

Our prison system is bursting at the seams with car thieves, rapists, muggers, murderers, bank robbers, jaywalkers, Martha Stewart and every othe low-end type of vermin known to man; yet it simply staggers my mind when I come across a story in a paper, online or by overhearing something on a crowded bus or train that begs the question -- if the prisons are so full of trash, why do we never seem to get a reprieve of this on the "outside" while so many are sequestered on the "inside?" Why is it that there are so many imprisoned for crimes but there never seems to be an abatement of same outside prison? And why is it, if we are truly created in God's image, that we seem to be able to endlessly and creatively find new ways to demonstrate man's inhumanity to man?

And if we really are created in God's image, what does that say about the Big Man? I think what it suggests is that we either need to rethink what our goals are as human beings, or we need to rethink why we were put on this planet in the first place.

At the very least, something to consider the next time the rent is due.