welfare queen and curious justice

If ever, there was anyone deserving of the title "Welfare Queen", it's Julie Came.

But to be fair, she did work awfully hard. At her business as a market trader and at deception. She shopped hard, too. And played the London property game, all the while wrongfully claiming over £120,000 (around $200,000) in social security benefits, claiming to live the life of a pauper with her seven children in a tiny little London flat.

Despite her conviction for benefits fraud this week, she escapes a jail sentence because she's a single mother. When handed a posession order for £223 grand, she wrote a check for the full amount.

-o-

Contrast this with the case of Maya Evans*, this week convicted this week at Bow Street Magistrates Court of violating section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. Gosh, it sounds wicked, but what did she actually do?

She read out the names of each and every British soldier killed in Iraq at the Cenotaph (the memorial to war dead, with particular significance for the unidentified fallen of WWI).

But this broke the new law about protesting within a mile and a half of Parliament. A scandalous new law designed to get rid of one man, Brian Haw, who has been staging a protest in Parliament Square for years now. He has grandfathered protection from this law.

I don't agree with much of Brian Haw's position. But, I think his presence is a vivid reminder that England is one of the oldest democracies with a tradition of free speech. Getting rid of him and prosecuting others for peaceful protest is a scandal.

*Maya, too, escapes jail time. Good.

Sorry, we've run out of time for questions

The speech went well today. My ignorance was not revealed til the question and answer session - and the chair kindly stepped in and moved us on. I was speaking to auditors, and managed to get more than one laugh. That's a triumph. Hurray for performance enhancing drugs.

-o-

In the parking lot on the way out, I spied a car with a Alabama Crimson Tide window sticker. I could scarcely believe it. I left a note. Not sure they'll like it.

-0-

Despite the fact that London is known for its fog, in the time I've lived here it hasn't been a frequent occurence. Today, though, the day I need to drive a couple of hours on the motorway, it's a real pea souper.

The Brits, who spend so much time talking about the weather, ignore it completely when it comes to driving. They just do not slow down, rain, shine, snow, or fog. I will say that people allowed more than the usual six inches distance between cars at 80 miles per hour.

-0-

I stopped off at RHS Wisley on the way back. Lovely. Foggy.

performance enhancing drugs

Well... I went to my local GP the other day for some antibiotics and while I was there I thought I might get me some nerve pills. See, I'm not the best traveller. I get nervous. And I have a 9 hour transatlantic journey ahead of me with a layover in Detroit. I'm not looking forward to it.

I'm not afraid of flying. I'm happy to do journeys of under 3 hours. I'm afraid of:

• missing my train to the airport
• missing my flight
• going to the wrong terminal
• leaving my passport at home
• leaving my ticket at home
• leaving the oven on
• arriving at the airport the day after I have a valid ticket
• getting the middle seat in the 5 seater central section
• being surrounded by unpleasant passengers
• being stuck on the plane for nine hours
• being stuck on the plane for longer than nine hours because of malfunction, mis-scheduling or some other mis-adventure
  

Post 9/11 I have new worries. That they will hold my husband in some windowless cell in Detroit on visa entry violations (he's been a good boy), that they will touch my shoes, that some trigger happy air marshall will shoot us, or that they will have finally coordinated the passport checking system with the City of Knoxville's parking violation records (I have been bad).

So anyway, this all adds up to bad nerves for the Vol Abroad. Normally, I just self-medicate, but drinking on the plane is dehydrating and I've run out of the contraband Xanex that a relative in the medical profession gave me - or I just flip out. I asked for some Valium.

Me: Umm... so I get really nervous so could I have some Valium or maybe some Xanex?
GP: Have you taken this before?
Me: Well, not on an actual prescription.

Wrong approach. I know that now. When she said - you don't really want a sedative, I said I wouldn't mind, you know, sleeping on the plane. (I was thinking one on the way over, two on the way back and one for recreational purposes on Christmas Day - and perhaps one slipped in the drink of VolMom - she gets a little over excited at Christmas)

Anyway, she wouldn't give me the good drugs. She gave me beta-blockers instead. I was doubtful. I looked it up on the internet - and you know what beta-blockers are for? Post heart attack recovery and low grade anxiety. Stage fright, performance anxiety, that kind of thing. Apparently musicians use it all the time. I'm thinking...this isn't really going to be strong enough for me. But I was about to do some facilitation at a high pressure event, so I took one.

Hey, they really can help your performance. I'm a good facilitator, and I'm generally not too nervous running workshops, but I was so calm... despite the fact that I overslept, hadn't prepared because they hadn't given me it in advance, it was an absolutely crap brief (it was so bad that another facilitator actually teared up from the pressure of trying to run to brief) and I had a major nasty cold and chest infection plus some high profile people in my group. I have to say it went really well.

Tomorrow, I'm off speaking again, something that usually does make me nervous (though I do it and I hide the nerves well) and have I prepared adequately? Nahhh.. But that's ok. I have the performance enhancing drugs. I'll let you know how it goes.

Right where I belong...apparently

What do you know...

You Belong in London

A little old fashioned, and a little modern. A little traditional, and a little bit punk rock. A unique woman like you needs a city that offers everything. No wonder you and London will get along so well.

What City Do You Belong In?

I don't normally post these, but it just seemed so apt.

If you were wondering...

There's an amusing anecdote about Christmas wishlists. A new British diplomat to Washington was warned about ethics violations and tempting gifts from powers foreign and domestic. He had been told that it was ok to accept gifts, if pressed, but that he should decline anything large and expensive, and ask instead for gifts of token value if refusal would offend.

Shortly after taking up office, he was called by a local newspaper and asked what he would like for Christmas. Mindful of diplomat's guidebook warnings, he said "If I must name something, perhaps just a small bowl of crystallised fruit."

A few days later, his request was listed in the Washington Post alongside those of other members of the diplomatic community who had stated that their Christmas wishes were: world peace, and end to hunger, a cure for cancer...


Ever mindful of this...I will make my Christmas list now. I emphatically do not want a small bowl of crystallised fruit, but that and peace in our time, an end to hunger, etc would be ok if you can't think of anything else to get me. Of course you can always make a contribution to my online Salvation Army kettle.

My christmas list:

• Noise reducing headphones - just so I don't have to listen to the leak from other people's headphones on my daily commute.
• A rain gauge: I don't know why I want one, but I do.
• Some new cowboy boots - I've had to resole mine and it's time to do it again. I need a pair like these, but something like this might come in handy. But since I always wear trousers over my boots - imagine people's surprise when I cross my legs in a meeting, the trouser leg rides up a little - and the tooling on these boots appears.
• A new oven.
• I sort of fancy a new digital camera, but I can't want it enough since I can't actually be bothered to do the homework enough to figure out which one.

Interested parties, may wish to bookmark this page - as I will provide further updates.

Pets for the stars

I have really been struggling on the blog front this week. I've been quite sick..and I can't drum up much interest in the world around me.

But we did get our quarterly magazine from Battersea Dogs' and Cats' Home yesterday and there were a few interesting snippets.

We got our cat Fancy from Battersea, and let me tell you, their adoption process is tough. We had to go through a rigourous interview, but I was determined! (Partly, because I knew someone who is very successful but who had been turned down and it is known as the pet rescue rehomer to the Stars) It took us three visits to Battersea before we could get her.



In this edition of Paws, there's an article about the rehoming process and the "top ten things you never knew."

Fact 4 is:

The rehoming process is the same for everyone, regardless of who you are. A fact which a major Hollywood star found rather surprising recently when we were unable to let him have a dog that was clearly wrong for him. But we are not mentioning any names!

Hmm... First of all, they let us have a cat that didn't fit our profile. We were supposed to get a male cat aged 2 to 3 of a quiet disposition. We got Fancy, female, 9 months and craaaazy.

The Vol-in-Law and I speculated who that might be. Which American is currently resident in London? Val Kilmer? Rob Lowe? No... these guys are in West End shows and will be moving back to America. Surely they wouldn't go for a pet. Kevin Spacey, perhaps?

Kevin Spacey already has a dog and was attacked when walking his dog near Kennington, South London.

Santa's hole in the ground

I did a bit of Christmas shopping yesterday in Covent Garden market. They have a big Christmas tree there - (and yes, it's called a Christmas tree) - and next to it is Santa's Grotto.



Santa's Grotto is where little kids go to see Santa in the UK, there are grottos in stores, malls, markets, etc.

I just don't understand why they think Santa lives in a cave. Santa lives here.

ViL: Sympathy for the Doctor?

Andrew Sullivan writes:
"Should we feel sorry for Condi Rice? She wasn't exactly the architect of the torture policies of the current administration, but she sure hasn't stopped them."

Hm, I find this an interesting question. I find the question of Dr Rice's morality - or lack of it - strangely fascinating. It's easy to peg Rumsfeld and Cheney as gleefully* malevolent people who do bad just for the sheer joyful fun of it, and Bush as an arrogant, nasty little spoiled brat pretending to be a good old boy. Powell was an intelligent, over-cautious and naturally rather weak (for a soldier) man whose adherence to basic norms of decency brought him into frequent conflict with Cheney/Rumsfeld, Rice acting as something of a mediator between the two. But I find Rice harder to peg. She's smart enough to know that torturing people may be fun, but is poor politics. She has done a consistently competent job as Sec of State, though perhaps that's only noteworthy because everyone else in the administration seems to fall so far short of that standard - we're at a stage where "American meets foreign leaders, no diplomatic disaster" has itself become noteworthy news. It's hard to tell - I don't think Rice approves of Rumsfeld/Cheney's antics, but there' no sign she disapproves of them on moral grounds, either. Yet if she did disapprove, she might not show it - that would be "disloyalty", the only sin Bush recognises, and certainly Rice has always been 100% loyal. Because of this, she has been a better Sec of State than Powell, I think. I don't know if she is a good person. I don't think she's exactly a bad person, in the sense that Rumsfeld/Cheney are bad, but it may be that she is largely amoral. There are worse people to be running the country than amoral pragmatists IMO - misguided idealists can be a lot worse. I suspect that she might make rather a good President - certainly much better than Bush - but that she is unlikely to run, because as a candidate a black woman would lose some of the Republican base, and I don't think Condi Rice would attract many defectors from the Democrats, black or white. I might be tempted to vote for her, but I don't get a vote, and I think the Vol prefers Hillary Clinton. And maybe she's right.
I dunno.

*OK, maybe calling Cheney 'gleeful' isn't quite right... but you've got to have seen that smug grin on Rumsfeld's face as he discusses (eg) how there's just not enough cash in the kitty to get vehicular armour for the Tennessee National Guard.

Granddad blogging: The war ends

Last week my grandfather related how he got some Nazi loot and this week the war ends...rather abruptly. Maybe he just got tired of talking about it. But not to worry, there's loads more of his life growing up in Wilson County, TN his time at UT and in Lawrenceburg, etc.

Finally the war got over and we wound up in Salzburg, we went through the mountains, the Austrian Alps the redoubt area, but they had guns set up supposedly to stop us when we went through there, but they didn’t shoot at us or do anything. And we wound up in Salzburg and stayed there a pretty good while, stayed in a little old hotel where the people did the cooking and all we had to do was get the food there, all I had to do was get it there.

And then after a while they decided they were gonna move and they moved us to Castle (?) Germany, and that was the town that the British bombed in retaliation for 2the bombing of Plymouth and Coventry and it was pitiful what they did to that town. But we stayed there for a little while and while we were there they decided that they were gonna move us again and they moved us down to Esviege (?) and that was right on the border where the Americans and the Russians came together and while we were at Esviege I taught school. I taught a little agriculture and I taught a little history and I taught _______ people and any people who couldn’t read and write how to read.

But that didn’t go on long til we got a notice that if you want to go to school in England to fill out a form and I filled one out and said I want to go to school some more. And I don’t where, not Stonehenge, but some Henge there was a military school close to London that’s where I was sent to, and I studied, I don’t know what I studied, not much of anything to tell you the truth. But I got passes and I went to London for several things and I went to Edinburgh. I saw the Queen, the present Queen, and her sister. Just rambled around over the countryside and then school was out and they shipped us back then to Stuttgart in Germany and we stayed there a while and then they decided we were going home. They sent us to a port of debarkation, I guess it was and caught a little old Liberty Ship and wound up in Camp Bradebury (?) Indiana and that’s where I was discharged. And that’s the end of my story.

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Technorati tags: oral history, WWII, history

Dear Phil

Dear Phil,

Thank you for your letter.

I appreciate that you are disappointed with the University of Tennessee 2005 football season. I agree that the results are simply not acceptable.

Last night I watched UT enter the field in a blaze of orange and white and crush their opponents mercilessly in a 70-3 walkover of a conference championship match. I was wearing orange and I was happy, but yet there was a bitterness in my heart. It was not my UT victorious. This year, I will not be putting up my orange and white Christmas decorations, for us this year football is over.

As I sat in the bar where some 100 US alumni watched post-regular season football, I saw a former University of Colorado linebacker and fellow American expat congratulate the Texans on their win and say it was a good game, and I had a revelation. In your letter, you state that the pride and the passion of Tennessee fans are what makes us unique. But I must beg to differ. We do have pride and passion, but what makes us special our is orneriness. Our arrogance when we win and our somber sullenness when we lose. We are not always the best sports. We draw dislike from many other fans, and they like to rub it in good when we lose.

I, as a Tennessee fan, will not be changing my sporting attitude, so I'm sure you appreciate why we really, really need to have a winning football team.

Looking forward to next season (but sullenly),

-Vol Abroad

Squirrel madness

A pack of squirrels in Russia have attacked and killed a dog. And there are unconfirmed reports of cat harassing herds of chipmunks.

Russian scientist says: "...things must be pretty bad in our forests." Yesss...see this photo from the Eastern forests.

Dispatch this kid quick.
___

• I've been squirrel hunting, once, with this guy, but we never managed to see any, much less shoot any.
• At a Royal Horticultural Society show recently, I overheard a woman say that she had squirrel problems in her garden. In a cut glass accent, she said "I catch them in a humane trap. And then plunge the trap into a water-filled trough. They drown very quickly."

___

Rex L Camino needs to get on the case, kinkajous and rabid 'roos, evil squirrels and chipmunks, too.

Tooting High Street Shopping

A frequent commenter on this blog, "John Galt" asked me what would "high street" be in SW17.

For my American readers, I must first expain "high street" and then explain SW17.

The high street:
The high street is the main commercial/social road in an area, where all your "main street" shops will be found. Although there are some mega-malls in the UK, many people still shop in town centers. The high street often has the official name "_____ High Road".

SW17
SW17 is the first part of my post code - which covers the whole of the Tooting area proper - and in London these codes are used as short hand for a neighbourhood. Having the right post code can add tens of thousands to your property price. My post code is SW17 XXX, a friend of mine who lives not very far at all from me, lives at SW19 XXX. That's the Wimbledon post code, and even though she really lives in West Colliers Wood - and Colliers Wood is crapper than Tooting - she gets the respectability and the cost of the SW19 post code.


Mr Galt's question:
I can't tell if he was being a bit sarky (which would not be out of character for this reader) but he asked What do you consider High Street in SW17?- perhaps he is familiar with the less-than-salubrious atmosphere of SW17? Or he was genuinely curious - or maybe both? I'll have you know that we have not one, but two yuppie coffee shops near me. And my borough - the borough of Wandsworth - is famous for supporting five high streets, one of them Tooting High Road, when many London boroughs can manage but one. This fact is so well known, that I only discovered it last night, after the Vol-in-Law told me. (He had been reading the council's PR rag).

Anyway, Mr. Galt, a picture is worth a thousand words, let me give you a little sample of Tooting high street shopping.


Looking for something that will put a smile on your face?


Hmm... surely they don't sell just odd looking succulents? No, look a little closer.


I go past this store just about every day and I never see anyone go in or out.


Not your style? Then, how 'bout some menswear?



And, trust me, the clothes live up to the name... for example a silver tie and vest set, or a dashing white polyester lounge suit have previously been in the window. It looks like one big joke, but the store owners seem so sincere about it all.

Christmas charity

Gentle readers,

Please note the new image in sidebar. It's my Salvation Army online kettle. Your contribution to the online kettle will go to support needy families and individuals in Tennessee (and possibly North Alabama, since I used my 38464 Lawrenceburg, TN zip code).

I've always been a big fan of the Salvation Army, they do a lot of good work and some of it they do in very creative ways. Plus that Guys and Dolls musical is a hoot!

I hope that you will give generously or consider starting your own SA online kettle. If a few of us do this, we can club together for a group kettle for the Tennessee online community. To start your own go here: The Salvation Army Online Kettle Campaign

For my UK based readers, you must have a credit card billed to a US address to contribute to my kettle. If you are a UK taxpayer, then please give generously to the Salvation Army UK where your donation will qualify for Gift Aid.

Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, or whatever)

- Vol Abroad


P.S. I had to steal the image of the kettle off the SA website - they're not really set up for bloggers. But it's all in a good cause, right?

ViL: disparate treatment of racist murders

There's a thoughtful article in The Times today about the different sentencing treatment of the racist murderers in the two near-identical racist murders. They include a factoid that of 22 officially classified (by the Home Office) racist murders in 2001-2004, 12/22 victims were white.
Assuming you have to be non-white to commit an officially classified racist murder of a white, here's some arithmetic:

The CIA World Factbook puts the non-white population (2001 census) at 8% of the UK population. Apparently members of 8% of the population carried out 54.5% of the officially classified racist murders in the UK 2001-2004. By my reckoning that means that non-whites per capita carried out 6.8 times* as many racist murders as whites. Of course "non-whites" is a very fuzzy category (eg according to the FBI's crime data east-Asians in America commit far less crimes of all sorts than do American whites), but it gives the lie to claims that it's mostly whites who carry out racist attacks.

*Edit: If any of the 10 racist murders of non-whites were by non-whites, which is highly likely (eg there were apparently two racist murders of blacks by Pakistanis and one racist murder of a Pakistani by blacks in the riots recently) then whites would have committed less than 10/22 of the murders and this number would be higher.

The Joys of Cousin Marriage

A piece in The Guardian extols the joys of marrying your cousin, which lowers the IQ of progeny by an average 7 points and greatly raises the likelihood of various genetic diseases, especially among already-inbred populations. Around 60% of Pakistanis in Britain marry a first cousin, who is brought over from Pakistan. I think there are several good reasons for banning the practice in the UK.

London shopping

Well, I've always been a bit contrary in the shopping stakes. Consumer boom, I buy nothing. Retail downturn, I'm away to the shops.

Yesterday after shopping at Heal's (why have this store and I not come together before?) I remarked to the Vol-in-Law that I couldn't believe I hadn't done much London high street Christmas shopping in year's past. It's marvellous. At Heal's last night they were handing out glasses of wine, there was a jazz trio, young attractive people kept tempting me with fudge and candy and a chocolate fountain and chocolate fondue. I played roulette (didn't win, but it was a free bet and the croupier was so charmingly flirty.) Sure, they were all trying to sell me stuff, but it was fun

The Vol-in-Law remarked that high street (main street) shopping was down about 20 percent in London, blamed on the bombings. For me this has been a boon. I live in London. I travel on the underground almost every day. So, what's one more tube trip to me? I normally can't be dealing with the crowds, so reduced numbers are great. And I'm just loving all the tricks and treats stores use to entice shoppers.

-----------

What to buy all the people on my list? See I've blown a sickening amount of dough on our flights to Nashville.

I don't reckon that anyone in my family actually needs anything within my budget that they can't go out and get themselves. So let me set out a warning right now not to expect much.

I'm trying to get a few little London-y momentos. So I hope y'all all love your Big Ben snow globes. Beats switches and ashes.
-

Doin' the time for hate crime

Are hate crimes - cromes motivated by racist, sexist, sectarian or anti-gay feelings - any worse than a crime motivated by greed, rage, intoxication or sexual jealousy? I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. It does seem particularly shocking when someone is killed over a physical trait they can't control. But are the murder victims of any kind of horrific slaying any less dead? No.

Two juries have reached verdicts this week in the UK and two judges have passed down sentence. In both cases, two young men were killed after walking a female friend to the bus stop. In one case, a nice young man was killed with an ice axe in an unprovoked attack. In the other, a nice young man had his face kicked in and was stomped to death in an unprovoked attack.

In both cases, they were killed because their attackers perceived that the victim had crossed some sort of racial boundary. Anthony Walker was killed because he was black, lived in a predominantly white area of Liverpool and had a white girlfriend. Christopher Yates was killed because he was white and had spoken to some Asian men on a drunken rampage. His killers did not appreciate a white man interfering with "Asian business".

The sentencing for Anthony's killers is complicated, but basically 20-year-old Paul Taylor's sentenced started from 30 year minimum tarriffs because it was a racially motivated crime and was reduced to 23+ years because he pled guilty. Michael Barton, 17 years old, gets a minimum sentence of 12 years as a juvenile and then got a top-up of 5 years and 8 months because the crime was racially motivated.

Christopher's killers Sajid Zulfiqar, Zahid Bashir and Imran Maqsood (26, 24 and 22 yrs old) get 15 years each (half as much of the basic sentence of Anthony's adult murderer) because the judge determined that his murder was not racially motivated. It was so determined because Christopher's murderers had attacked people of other races during their destructive spree. True, they caused a ruction in a curry house (Asian victim), but they also accosted and shouted racial abuse at black victims. It seems particularly daft to me that racially abusing a black person means your murder of a white person wasn't racially motivated.

Neither family is happy with the tariffs handed down and feel the sentences should have been longer. I'm not too happy either.

I'm generally againt specific penalties or top-ups for hate crimes, because nearly all murders are motivated by hate. In the juxtaposition of these two cases - one a "hate crime" the other not - one young man's tragic slaying somehow weighs more than the other's. Each set of killers had hate in their hearts. The law should apply equally regardless of the skin color of the victim or the murderer.

_____

Around the blogosphere: The law is an ass again from London Blog seems fairly reasonable to me, and rather predictably there are responses which smack of unpleasant racism themselves here and in the comments here.

Tags: crime, criminal justice, racism, Politics, London, hate crime

An anniversary of sorts

Here's an anniversary of sorts.

Two days ago was the 142nd anniversary of the battle of Fort Sanders.

Yes, I'm two days late, but I've been very busy mentally composing my reply to Phil Fulmer's letter to Tennessee fans, and working and shopping and stuff.

Here's a post about it on one of those South Will Rise Again type blogs. But I was interested to note that the fellow posting was born on the battle site, for I was, too.

He links to a site with an eyewitness account of the battle - which contains the lines:

"Knoxville must have been quite a place before the war began, but it looks now as though it was the oldest place in the world and been allowed to run down ever since it was built...."

I've lived in Fort Sanders, and that was certainly an apt description when I was there. I'm soon on my way for a visit after many years (VolBro lives in the Fort), so I can see first hand if the rot has stopped.

The effect of TennCare cuts hits home

Thank you Dana for posting a link to this article on Nashville is Talking. It's a story about people struggling with their health in Lawrence County, following the TennCare cuts. It made me so sad. It's so different from what happens here in the UK.

It also made me sad, because Lawrence County is where I went to high school (I'm a triple legacy of Law-Co-Hi and UT) My mom and quite a few of my kin live in Lawrenceburg, the county seat.

Before the cuts were made, VolMom attended a lecture where a local doctor told a local audience that TennCare would kill some number of Lawrence Countians each month. I can't remember what the number was - but it was staggering. Meet a few of those who will die and whose family members have died in that Nashville Scene article.

In the UK, we have socialised healthcare and it's not a dirty word. Poor people, small business owners, fledgling entrepreneurs, people with chronic conditions and fatal illnesses don't have to worry about being uninsurable or not being able to afford insurance. We are all covered. Rich people, healthy people, people who want a bit more of a cadillac service can pay to go private. And they are still covered by the National Health Service, too, when they need it.

Yes, it has its problems, particularly in London. A lot of people have their horror stories, and I do too. But at least it's there. People don't kill themselves because they think they're going to get cut off insurance. And I want to stress that there are much better models of universal health care coverage than that of the UK.

I understand that there are all kind of fiscal constraints and that there were management problems with TennCare. But a caring society doesn't treat people the way these people are being treated.

UPDATE: and now I am a "liar"

He knew he had it comin'

In a letter to the editor of the Tennessean on the 27th of November:

I hear that freedom of speech is an issue. Well, I feel if freedom of
speech is killing our children at the rate that is reported, someone needs to
get to the root of the problem, and I am telling you what that problem is.

In yesterday’s Tennesseean, Mark Forrester has a letter to the editor in response.


In some kind of quasi-defence of rap music, he writes:

Years ago, one of our most beloved country music icons, Johnny Cash, sang
with a snarl in his deep, baritone voice, "I shot a man in Reno just to watch
him die." To have scorned the Man in Black because he pointed out the darkness
of the human condition would have been a ridiculous denial of the pathos his art
so ably conveyed.

C'mon, man, don't go after the Man in Black

I first saw Cash lyrics used for this purpose, though in a far less balanced way, in Michael Moore’s book Stupid White Men. Moore selected a few of the fluffier lines from rap music to show how “positive” it could be – and then went on to lambaste Johnny for singing “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” VolBro had bought the book in Florentine bookshop and spluttered and ranted and read the section aloud to me in our Italian hotel room (without a view) so I could splutter and rant, too. He wanted to pitch out the book there and then, but it was the only one he had in English.

As for any work of art, literature, song, etc. You can’t look at a single line to determine the meaning of the piece. Yes, the character in Folsom Prison Blues is sorry example of humanity, but he expresses regret, if not remorse, in the lines:

When I was just a baby, my mama told me, "Son,
Always be a good boy; don't ever play with guns."
But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin' I hang my head and cry.

Followed in the next verse by:

I know I had it comin, I know I can’t be free

Within the context, you know that the character is a bad man, not someone whose actions are to be emulated.

I don’t listen to rap music if I can help it, and there may well be examples of songs which both describe and condemn violence. However, it’s my impression that much of it glorifies and condones violence, criminal activity and promiscuity. I would never suggest that these works be censored or outlawed, but I can’t see anything wrong with avoiding them and encouraging others to do the same.

And if you do want to defend that stuff, for goodness sake, don't go after Johnny in the process.