Tag Bullies

Lies, lies, and damned lies

Michael 16 Comments

It’s not easy to maintain decorum in what in normal times would be considered a world of bad practical jokes led by the prototypical middle school bully. Actually…it’s impossible. I tried and got various examples of snark, sass, sarcasm, and outright mean. I could never find the intelligent, intellectual treatise so much of my writing resembles. So I decided to go with the version that is just cranky, but in a world-weary, wacky way. Enjoy…not!

It’s quite started already. No I don’t mean the seeming swiftness of idiocy by which Dingy Donald is making his presence known. It’s the swiftness in which most reasonable people, even some of the lame brains who once supported Donny Dingbats, are tuning it out. “Oh, it’s just too idiotic to even think of.” “I can’t bear to watch the news so I’m not going to.” “It will go soon enough and this will be out of everyone’s system.”

If you’re dumb enough to think the constant lies that continue to fall out of his orange face and the incompetent if not outright stupid decisions he and his Kookie Cadre are attempting to foist upon us, you are as big a problem as the erstwhile assistant, Immigrant X-Factor.

I wish I could give you the citation but I am not sure there is a single source. It seems it is more of a truism that those who constantly lie do not do so hoping you will believe them or even to deceive, but that you ultimately become so inured to the lies that you stop caring about them being lies. That and it’s sneaky cousin, increasingly more outrageous acts, are what is going on. Dipstick Donny is out to barrage you with so much that is unbelievable that you stop believing.

You may have notice I have taken a page from Donald Dillweed’s playbook and made up some darling sobriquets for him, not necessarily to disparage, knowing I haven’t actually come out and said anything about a specific and clearly identifiable about any specific person. Consider it to be but just letting you decide who is the f***wad around here. Remember any turdbrain who accuses me of being hard a real person clearly is showing his/her/its true feelings assuming they think it must be DJ the Dipstick. (Did f***wad give it away?)

Naturally this is, for the time being, a free country, so if you disagree with me you have the right. And I have the right to delete any comments I don’t like then later say they never existed. But I would encourage you, to instead start spreading the word that there are bad things happening and its not that the price of eggs has almost doubled since November 5.

It’s the bad things like there is a tuberculosis outbreak going on in the US and the agencies who would be responsible for tracking and reporting have been ordered to not release information to the public. It’s that aid is being withheld from disaster areas until the local government succumb to the once and mighty tv personality. It’s that the $35 cap on insulin was repealed on January 20. It’s that the Department of Labor has been told to cease investigation of and enforcement activity against discrimination in the workplace. It’s that the NIH is no longer allowed to even authorized publication of research.

For every lie or contorted half truth that falls from the face of a perpetual lying machine, we need to make the truth just as loud and just as relentless so the Neanderthal masses understand that being a bully was not the way to get through middle school and it still makes them look like they are as dumb as a bag of rocks and not as good looking.

End of rant.

This is where I’d normally say something about another blog on a different website but it’s too classy to be associated with such drivel.

Blog Art 2

Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie, and “It’s a Shame.”

Michael Leave a comment

We’ve been taking a post or two as we approach the Fourth of July holiday to see what’s out there that makes us uniquely Americans – including the bad things, while trying to find the good things about us.

In our last post we took our first look at how the country is doing and remarked on the bullying of the now famous bus monitor and the remarkable response people had to her plight.  Much of that remarkable response might have been American, but since that time we found out that the instigator of the good is a Canadian.  Thank you Mr. Norther American for showing us below the 49th parallel how it is to be good.

Unfortunately there are still many bad examples.  Sometimes, not only do we have a hard time admitting that the bad are the bad, we go the extra step to assume the bad is actually an example of good behavior, just gone wrong.  One morning this week the local television news had a piece about three teenagers that were killed two years ago right after attending “an alcohol fueled graduation party.”  The parents wanted to remember them so they created a memorial with plaques, benches, and pictures overlooking the site of the accident.  Had we not done a little research it would have been just three kids who died.  Other than that one phrase quoted above, the morning news story said nothing about the car’s occupants being drunk.  And being drunk isn’t something one should be memorializing.  It’s a shame.

But research it we did and that research uncovered a longer piece that was run during the evening newscast the day before.  In that version one of the mothers told those who attended the memorial to do whatever it takes to not drive after drinking.  It also mentioned that the alcohol was provided by a parent.  As we continued to dig we uncovered another article and video of the sentencing of the woman who bought a half-keg of beer for the graduation party from two years ago (one year of house arrest, 3 years on probation).  But we didn’t uncover scores of articles addressing the core problem.  There are people out there, sometimes children, who drink to impairment and then try to pilot a speeding vehicle.  We found no organized outrage at public drunkenness or at children drinking, no support of underage drinking laws, and no response from MADD, SADD, or the District Attorney.  Perhaps nobody wanted to hurt the survivors more than they were, and still are.  It’s a shame.

A day later the same television station ran a story about the arraignment of a man who during a drunken driving rampage injured 10 people in what police described as a “bumper bowl game.”  This young man hit at least six cars, one head on, before running into a guard rail that stopped his onslaught.  His blood alcohol was three times the legal limit. 

He probably missed the story from the day before and didn’t get a chance to do whatever it took to not drive after drinking.  What a shame.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?

 

Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie, and “Aren’t they cute?”

Michael Leave a comment

Summer is a great time to be thinking about how the country is doing.  We’re getting close to the 240th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and we should be checking up on how we’re doing keeping a country free and a government of, by, and for the people.  (For anybody checking, that anniversary isn’t coming up this July.  It’s still 4 years away but thinking stuff like this can take a while.)  Those few weeks between Flag Day and Independence Day are good days to look about at what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s uniquely American.

Last week we got to see the best and worst of Americans all wrapped up in one convenient incident.  Although it happened earlier, by mid-week it hit the national news.  Four middle schoolers, 11 and12 year olds, decided it was going to be not only a good day to taunt their bus monitor but to record and post it to the Internet for all the world to see.   So they hurled insult after insult, poked and pointed, swore at and about a 68 year old grandmother, former bus driver, and guardian of the good children on the bus.  It wasn’t the first time that they aimed their low sights at her, and it wasn’t the first time that she sat stoically taking it.  It was a horrible example of how miserably some American youth are raised and how much of their disgusting behavior is tolerated.

And then in an amazingly disgusting example of wretched behavior, one of the feeble four decided they should share their offensive conduct with the rest of the world and thus the recording was posted to the Web.   But instead of thousands of viewers sending them accolades for a bullying job well done, hundreds of thousands instead sent sympathy to the abused woman.  Tangible sympathy.  Five hundred thousand dollars worth of sympathy.  A half million ways to say we’re sorry for the incredibly stupid behavior of incredibly stupid children.

Perhaps it was the world’s way of providing one of those auto corrections that our planet does without our knowledge to keep us from hurling into space away from the safety of our solar orbit.  Maybe it’s the first step in the world’s recognition that not all children are cute and impulsive and they don’t mean anything by it.  Maybe somebody is finally realizing that if the parent’s aren’t going to handle their children, if the schools aren’t going to discipline the children, and if the police aren’t going to punish the children, that at least someone is going to see that the victims will be compensated for being a bully’s target.

Maybe the most disturbing part of the week’s news was that now that the children have been exposed and have even attempted too little too late apologies there are some who are upset that others are expressing their dismay at the miscreants’ behavior.  Again, in a remarkable worldly auto correction, the bullies have become the targets.  Even targets of death threats.  Don’t worry kids.  Those old people saying you should be expelled, fined, imprisoned, or maybe even executed are just so cute, but a little impulsive, and they don’t really mean it.  Maybe.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?