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A SHOW OF LEGS ON PUBLIC TELEVISION

While watching one of our favorite talk shows Friday night on public television, we weren’t impressed with two of the three female guests. How can you take a woman seriously who lets her short skirt move way up above her knees, showing off her bare legs and thighs while participating in a serious political discussion? HELLOOO! This is not an episode of Sex and the City, and it’s not the morning show on ABC, NBC, or CBS.

What would we think of a male journalist who wore a kilt and propped up his hairy legs as he loftily critiqued the actions of various elected officials?

Feminists decry their lack of career opportunity, and yet when they do the short skirt act, they will not be respected.. If you watch the show, notice how the elder stateswoman, presents herself.  No, she doesn’t dress like a Vogue model. And yes, she has a down home, Hoosier look—slacks and jackets and sensible shoes.  But she looks professional and you are impressed with her impassioned,  intelligent comments, even though you might not agree 100% with her liberal convictions.

Ladies, if you want to be taken seriously on public television, and you want to wear a skirt, make sure that it covers your knees.  Or, if you must show some flesh, sit behind a desk or counter.

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SCHADENFREUDE: ENJOYING THE MISERY OF OTHERS

 

Do you like waiting in line at the grocery store checkout?  I do, because I can laugh at the latest “made up” news.  Examples: Kate and Camilla hate each other.  Hillary has brain cancer. Catherine Zeta Jones tried to commit suicide.  Harry is sick of Meghan and is going to dump her.  George Clooney and his wife had a knock down fight at the royal wedding and are getting a divorce.

Sometimes I think it would be fun to sit around with a bunch of other writers and dream up crazy ideas for juicy stories about celebrities.

What really amazes me is that these tabloids are  pricey.  And yet, they’re sold in dollar stores , drug stores and supermarkets, which  means ordinary people are willing to waste five bucks to read a bunch of fantasy stories, and the entire paper can be read in five minutes (or less, while you’re waiting in a long line and don’t have to pay for it.)

Usually, the tabloids are full of bad news. Someone is getting a divorce, or committing adultery, or had a terrible face lift.   It seems the general public has an insatiable appetite for schadenfreude (German word for enjoying other’s misfortune)

Your own life may be boring or full or stress and you might not have enough on your debit card to pay for everything in your cart. To make things worse  when you’re standing in line, you might feel a twinge of envy when you see pictures of  successful  beautiful people.  But wait, here’s a story about some movie’s star’s nervous breakdown.  It seems there is an endless market for stories of misery and downfall. If there aren’t any this week, the tabloids can just make something up, because they know that everyone loves to gloat  over the misfortunes of  the rich and famous. 

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WOULD YOU SHOPLIFT ASPIRIN FROM THE DOLLAR STORE?

I know of people who would not want to be seen in a Dollar Store.  But it’s on the way home from the library and they have good prices, so I stopped for a bottle of aspirin.
There was a lot of confusion at the check out.  An elderly man was having trouble finding a credit card that worked, which meant the line was backed up pretty deep.  At last, another clerk appeared and started checking people out at a second cash register, while the man kept going back to his car in desperation to find a good credit card.  Finally, I offered to pay his bill, but at that moment, he found a card that worked, or maybe found some cash. These are some of the sad stories you see there every day.
Nevertheless, I got home and unpacked my Bayer Aspirin from the box.   Upon unscrewing the cap, I saw that the foil seal had been neatly trimmed away, and there were maybe 10 aspirin in the bottom of the bottle.  By then, I’d thrown the box in the trash and it was all wet and smashed.  Fortunately, the receipt was stuck in my purse, so I was all set to get my money back.  The manager was very understanding and immediately gave me a new , intact bottle.  I asked him if that wasn’t pretty amazing to think someone would bother stealing a few aspirin, and he shrugged and said, “happens every day.” 
I got to thinking about the person who did that.  Was it an employee who sneakily stole the aspirin when no one was around?  Or maybe someone broke, desperate, and in pain.  It seems incredible that in our affluent society someone would risk a shoplifting conviction for such a small thing. I really don’t know, but from now on, I’m going to check the over the counter drugs  I purchase, just to make sure they’re all there.

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DO YOU VOTE IN THE PRIMARIES? IF NOT, WHY?

 

My state has the distinction of having had the lowest voter turnout in the primaries this spring: 20%.  And yet, my hometown in Indiana  is considered a bellwether city, having predicted the outcome of every presidential election except two since 1888. And they haven’t missed in 60 years.  Clearly, Hoosiers do vote, just not so much in the primaries.


Statistically, college graduates are more likely to vote than the rest of the population.   My husband and I both have post graduate degrees, but we don’t vote in the primaries, because in order to do so, you have to vote as a Republican or Democrat, and we are neither.  For example:  We strongly disagree with the Republican stance against Planned Parenthood.  We disagree with Democrats on the idea of universal health care.  Consequently, we tend to vote for a particular candidate who more closely represents our views, rather than the party he/she is affiliated with.  We’ve voted for both Republican and  Democratic candidates for years.  And of course, we always voted for that Hoosier favorite, Evan Bayh, no matter what he was running for. There was a true gentleman and a scholar, and his leaving politics was understandable, but depressing.

 

Sometimes, if we don’t care for the candidates from either party, we choose the one we dislike the least.  

 
I know, the party activists would accuse us of apathy and lacking in patriotism.  But we aren’t activists.  We wouldn’t have the energy for it, at our age.  We only know about the newer candidates from what we see on TV, which may or may not be accurate, and it’s often easier to vote for or against an incumbent, because  he/she  at least has a track record. So now, we can just sit back, relax,  and make our own  independent decisions  in the fall elections as to who would best serve the needs of our fellow Americans.

 

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DO’S AND DON’TS OF HUGGING

Hugging someone you barely know or care about seems to have become commonplace in today’s culture.  As a person coming of age in the fifties, I can tell you we didn’t used to do much hugging except with a little kid, a close relative, or a friend who had suffered some kind of painful loss, like the death of a loved one.  Of course, we hugged our boyfriends, but that was usually leading up to something more intimate.

Maybe it started in the late sixties, when hippies were advocating we make love, not war.  I’m not sure. The first time I witnessed group hugging was when my teenage son came home from a church camp, and when I went to pick him up,  all the boys and girls were  going around the parking lot and  hugging each other.  We didn’t do that when we came home from girl scout camp.  So, I knew the times, they were a changing.

Now, there’s even a National Hugger Day in January.

I pretty much tried to adapt and fit into the hugging trend.  I didn’t initiate hugs, but then again, I didn’t resist them.  But I finally drew the line when I took a water aerobics class and encountered a serial hugger.  This lady apparently hoped to a recruit new members  to her particular denomination by  zigzaging  through the water, approaching unsuspecting women, and embracing them while whispering biblical quotations in their ear.  I think some needy women enjoyed that, but I really wasn’t too keen on hugging a sweaty, clammy stranger.  I kept trying to dodge her and hide behind other women, but when  she continued to stalk me with a big smile and outstretched arms, I finally backed away, finding some pretext of doing something else.  She finally got the message and left me alone.  But when we ended up back in  the locker room after class, she usually gave me a dirty look.
So, if hugging is your thing, and all your friends do it, that’s fine with me, but just remember that some people like a little more space.

 

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ARE SAUDI WOMEN FREE AT LAST?

On Sunday, it became legal in Saudi Arabia for women to drive.  However, most of them probably won’t because there’s a lot of red tape involved in getting a driver’s license, and Saudi  conventional wisdom is that women are mentally unfit to drive.  Wow! Talk about being out of the loop. Numerous studies from many countries show that women have far fewer traffic accidents than men.

Remember when your teenage children finally got their driver’s license, and you no longer had to chauffeur them everywhere, at all hours of the day and night?  One of the happiest days of my life was when all three of my children could finally drive.  I would think Saudi men would feel a tremendous relief now that women can  drive their kids to school, shop, and run all the many errands that women in other countries have been doing for a century.
But at least it’s a step in the right direction.  Maybe someday, they will change the dress code.  I don’t know about you,  but I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I see a woman dressed in black from head to toe on a hot summer day, with  her face covered, except for her sad eyes peering out at the rest of the world where women are free.    Worse yet, you realize that this woman is probably married to a first cousin, because the only way she can meet men is at private family gatherings.  All of this inbreeding results in  high rates of rare genetic disorders like sickle cell anemia and Thalassemia.  Statistics show that  Saudi women are 13 times more likely to bear a child with a genetic disorder than women in other countries.   I know, it’s all part of their culture and it’s their own business—I guess.  But  my heart goes out to the women and girls in that country. 

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ARE WE ON THE VERGE OF CIVIL WAR?

 

Remember the Chicago Riots?  If you are under 40, you hadn’t even been born.  When I hear younger  people say they’re worried about this country breaking out in Civil War, it’s probably because they don’t realize what tough times we survived 40 years ago.

The riots, following Martin Luther King’s assassination,  resulted in 20 people dead and 500 injured. There were 125 fires, 210 buildings destroyed, and 2,000 people arrested  in Chicago alone, before the violence extended to Washington DC,  New York City and 60 cities, altogether.  If you were around then, you  felt as if  the country was falling apart.  Many young men moved to Canada and never returned.  It was a terrifying time—Robert Kennedy was assassinated, and the Vietnam War was tearing this nation apart.  In the early 70’s,  there were protests  and race riots in every city and state, and college campus.

So now,  the political climate  seems to many  like everything is worse than it’s ever been.  Name calling, vulgarity, protests, riots.   The crisis at the border.  Affordable care.  Racial profiling, Tariff’s. North Korea.  #MeToo.  But for those of us who remember the late 60’s  and the violent domestic explosions in the early 70’s  it’s deja vu. 

Think of all the people you encounter during the day.  Most of them are civil and polite.  Yes, political disagreements  are more divisive than ever now,  but I would bet that sane, courteous, thoughtful,  people  still comprise what used to be called the “silent majority.”  It’s nothing new to fear speaking out about controversial issues.

Since that time, we have lived through assassinations, wars in the middle east, recessions,  more race riots, and the worst attack our country has ever been through on 9/11 . So here we are again at the crisis point. But. I believe that  we  share  more values and common ground uniting us than tearing us apart.   I don’t think we will have a civil war.  This nation will remain strong and we will survive.

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