Nothing Personal

NOTE 1:  Just before we went to press, Disney announced it was returning Jimmy Kimmel back to television.  Whether I think they caved to pressure or not is irrelevant (personally, I think they were cowards).  As I write below, Disney is a private corporation which can do what it wants.  Whatever.  I still won't watch.  And not just because it's way past my bedtime.  Which it is.

NOTE 2:  There is no press.  Just me typing with two fingers, painfully, on a computer keyboard.

********

      

    As some of you know, I'm a Monetary Exchange Specialist* at a nationally known hardware store.  Many people have come through my line looking to purchase this widget or that.  I try to be cheerful and strictly professional, no matter what type of mental disease they're suffering from.

    Trust me.  I usually keep any wise-guy remarks to myself when someone asks me where I keep my nuts, for example.

I almost gave myself a hernia holding my tongue on that one

    Due to construction, which relegated us father back from the main road, and an aging clientele which is, frankly, dying, business has been suffering.  What's more, there are some areas where we can improve as a store.  However, the owners feel there is little sense pouring money into a business which is slowly failing.  The less money they devote to improvements, the more sales taper off which leads to less of a desire to improve...you get the picture.

   Hang in there, I'm getting to the point of this.

   Now, imagine if I voiced these concerns to a customer at my register.  Concerns which are heard by the ten people behind him.  Toss in a few choice editorial comments about the owners' intelligence and well, at best, these folks may never choose to shop there again.  At worst, the word gets back to the owners that one of their employees is badmouthing them.

    They decide to fire me.  Or, if they're feeling especially magnanimous, offer me a chance to apologize in lieu of being canned.

    But, what about my freedom of speech, you ask (if anyone is actually reading this)?  Don't I have freedom of speech?  Well, yes I do.  I can peddle my freedom of speech on the street corner or among my friends at the nudie bar  church,

    You see, a business owner can choose to terminate someone who has alienated half his clientele.  He has that freedom of speech to do so.  How dare anyone demand he keep a rabble rouser on the payroll?

    What a lot of people fail to understand in the whole Jimmy Kimmel affair is that he maintained freedom of speech even though Disney suspended him for making an outrageous claim about the murder of Charlie Kirk.  Many were justifiably outraged.  As a result, Disney continued to lose millions due to the fact that the noted bigmouth was being a...bigmouth.  Conservatives

or people with early bedtimes

had no desire to hear their views trashed on national TV. 

NOTE 3:  Incidentally, I'm old enough to remember the bitch fight between Florida and Big Mouse over LGBTQ (or some other such nonsense).  Conservatives were outraged while Liberals championed Mickey then. 

"Frikkin' gay mice everywhere!"

    ABC, the network which broadcasts the show, made a business decision.  It had nothing to do with Trump (noted bigmouth himself).

Technically, the governor of, say, South Carolina can mandate that
everyone in his state be Southern Baptists.  Just not the federal government.

        For those who need a refresher on the Constitution, the First Amendment states that Congress (italics mine) shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.

  It says nothing about what a private business can or cannot do.  Nothing.

    Things like what happened to Kimmel happen all the time.  Roseanne Barr was cancelled for an errant tweet, Tucker Carlson was bounced from Fox and even Donald Trump lost his Twitter account.

    Now, I didn't like that these things happened.  But, I understood that business decisions were made.  It wasn't the federal government which directed that networks take any action. 

NOTE 4:  Yes, apparently there was no shortage of arm-twisting coming from the senile Delaware Muppet Administration on Facebook.  I'm not naive.  Just one crisis at a time, though.

"I had muppets working for me, Lord?  I love that Fozzy Bear."

    In any event, Disney was within their rights to do what they did.

    Which is why I'm going to keep my piehole shut when I ring up mulch and wood screws.

Hee...hee...hee...I said 'screws.'

*cashier     

Been a Bad Week

   

A bigger understatement you'll be hard-pressed to find.

    I was speaking with my daughter this morning.  She told me that, one day last week while driving to her mother-in-law's with her two-year-old daughter, she passed an elderly gentleman attempting to wave her down.  She wondered whether he was in some sort of distress and needed help.  She wondered if she should stop.

    She did not.  

    Perhaps, in years past, she may have.  But not now.  Not in today's day and age.  

    She told me that she felt a twinge of guilt that she didn't.  However, she couldn't risk anything happening to her daughter.  I told her that I was very happy that she didn't stop.  After all, she was my daughter.  I told her that she did the absolute right thing.  The best thing to do is that she could call the police and inform them that an older gentleman apparently needed some help.  They would then render aid, if necessary.

    Likewise, if someone approached her, say, in a parking lot requesting assistance, she should tell them they both could go back into the store to call for help.  Never, never accompany them (even if they look like a kindly old man or woman) to their vehicle.

Because this.

    There are far too many stories of innocuous looking people luring young women into situations from which they cannot escape.

    Luckily, she said, she recognizes potential danger when she sees it.

After all, her favorite TV series is Criminal Minds

    That's my girl.

    In a week that saw the senseless murders of Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk, the world continues to be a very dangerous place.

And the fact that people are openly cheering his assassination
tells me it won't get any better anytime soon.

    In fact, I fear that it will get worse before it gets better.

    Until then, smart people will keep passing those trying to wave them to stop.

    And that is a damn shame.  

Same As It Ever Was

NOTE 1:  I hope none of you are expecting a deep-dive into politics and history.  Heck, I'm just noting similarities between now and then. Neither am I consulting any reference material.  Rather, I’m relying on what the nuns beat into me in elementary school.
NOTE 2: If you don't feel like reading the below regurgitation, let me summarize: political hatred has been with us since the beginning.
NOTE 3: I would have been a Federalist.  The Republicans (the parties have drastically changed since then) talked a good game about mankind, but a lot of mankind are douchebags, then and now.  Incidentally, its standard bearer, Thomas Jefferson, owned slaves. Then again, so did Federalist Alexander Hamilton. 

 

"You did what!?  Dude!!"

So...there's that.

 

The following is a companion piece to my last entry, “If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say”...

   For those who are dismayed by the crapfest which passes as American politics, don’t think these things are unprecedented.

  This kind of venom has always been with us.  It's just that the existence of television and the pervasive influence of that cesspool of hatred and despair (i.e., social media) makes it seem like we're experiencing something new.

   In fact, one doesn't have to do a lot of digging to find similar examples.  The rise of partisan vitriol has been with us since nearly the beginning of our nation.  Even though George Washington warned against the corrosive nature of parties (he also cautioned against foreign entanglements...that worked just as well), the rise of the Federalists and Republicans (aka “Anti-Federalists”) kicked off an animosity which continued nearly unabated up until the dumpster fire of today.

  Alexander Hamilton, butted heads quite frequently with Thomas Jefferson.  In fact, I dare say they hated each other. Violence, including riots, broke out quite often between their opposing factions.

Coulda been worse, though

  John Adams, a noted curmudgeon ridiculed as "His Rotundity," was so butthurt over being succeeded by Jefferson that he refused to attend his successor's inauguration.

  You see?  Childish immaturity goes back well over two hundred years.

"I think he's talking about you."

  By the way, if you get a chance to see the John Adams miniseries on HBO, do yourself a favor and watch it.  Paul Giamatti nails the second president.  It is a well-done, evenhanded portrayal.

  Friends during the Revolution, Adams and Jefferson became bitter opponents. In later life, they pretty much reconciled and became amiable pen pals.

"And I can't get those Whigs to stay off my lawn!"
"You do know I'm right here, don't you?"

  The angst didn't stop there...John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes, Warren Harding, FDR, Bill Clinton, and so on.

  And, obviously, Abraham Lincoln. The schism created by his presidency resulted in...well, hundreds of thousands of dead Americans.

  Don't get me wrong. None of what is going on in today's society is good. Personally, I've been sick about it for months.  And I'm quite sure it will go on.

  My point is, it's not unprecedented.  Maybe there is some comfort there.  Perhaps not.

  Just imagine, though, if Richard Nixon had a Twitter (X...whatever) account.

"Trust me, if you think I'm bad, well, boy howdy,
wait until you see the doozies coming up."