Political Comment of the Week

The first one up top is mine. I thought it captured the sense of the week before the Supreme Court spoke to marriage freedom.

The photo below, I received from a friend labeled as "alternative flag commentary."

Later, I got another. I really like this one, yes it's photoshopped and sexist and mean-spirited but I couldn't find one of Sarah Palin.

Damn! I just found out Ann Coulter is yesterday's news.

All Those Years Ago

My life changed 25 years ago today. Old friends from that time will know what I mean, some of them share the memory and the change. The event is not the point.

Change is.

How many times in your life has some event, some minor alteration, something completely happenstance or inevitably a person changed your life?

Sometimes it's immediate, Saul being struck from his stead. Other times, most of the time, there is just a slight nudge on your path. Often we miss it when it happens, but later, if we practice reflection, the ripples can be seen as a slowly rising tide that carried us away.

Think about it, no really think about it. In just a few moments I can think of 5 individuals who changed my life. More than just a great professor, an amazing lover or a challenge put to me; well, maybe the lover; but it's your life, do your own inspecting

Simple choices eventually altered my life forever.

The final play of the Stockbridge game.

A sixteen year old applying to just one college, because the high school counselor handed over just a single application.

A friend who signed me up for the real estate exam and then told me I had two weeks to study.

A woman I didn't love, who told me she loved me.

A catalog in an unread pile for over year, only to somehow appear a day before the deadline.

. . . and first, last and always -- the magical time that ended June 19, 1990.

One of My Favorite Quotes

"Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else." 

George Bernard Shaw

I've always liked this quote since I first heard it in 1966 on WJMD, the Kalamazoo College radio station. Actually, my friend Bob Snyder heard it and relayed it to me. Where are you these days, Bob?

Anyway, it's not cynical. How can it be, I mean George Bernard Shaw; he actively encouraged marriage across lines of both race and class. He also co-founded the London School of Economics and he like shortbread.

So go out there today and grossly exaggeration how you feel about someone.

When I Was Young

"In my lifetime, we've gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. We've gone from John F. Kennedy to Al Gore. If this is evolution, I believe that in twelve years, we'll be voting for plants." -- Lewis Black

I like Lewis Black, I'm always up for a good, over-the-top rant. However, in this particular case, putting the humor aside, I disagree with his observation.

Several years ago, I saw a video bit, probably on The Daily Show. There were clips of Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Cavuto, Bachmann and Palin; all delivering basically the same line:

"When I was young, America was a better place." Or a safer place, happier place, blah-blah place."

The last one to speak was Glenn Beck; he was, of course, in tears over the direction that his Amerika had taken since his youth.

The punchline, delivered by someone other than John Stewart was:

"Of course, you saw the world in a different way. 

You were NINE!"

How many (white, upper middleclass) children were aware of:

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The Vietnam War

The Oil Embargo

The Pentagon Papers

Bosnia

A Middle-East War

Watergate

The next Middle-East Crisis

Three Mile Island

The Middle-East Crisis after the last one

Iranian Hostages

Chernobyl

Tiananmen Square

The Persian Gulf War (Iraq)

Somalia

Rwanda

O.J. Simpson

The OJ trial was 21 years ago. Add 10 years to that, ten years of age being the limit I'm placing on childhood. This means once you reach the age of 31, you're an idiot if you begin any sentence with the words "When I was growing up, America was a better place . . ."

How do I know? Well, I don't really, it's subjective, but you are reading my thoughts on my blog on the internet. Try doing that when you were ten.