I am neither a scholar nor a sage. In truth, no one gives a rat’s ass what I have to say, but say it I will even if no one reads this blog post.
In the spirit of being transparent, I will admit without embarrassment that I am a fact-checker despite the fact that I am continually told that I should not let facts get in the way of a good story. Should it matter if the family event happened on Thanksgiving in 1982 or if it happened at Easter in 1983? It shouldn’t matter as long as the purpose of the story is told as folklore, but not to “prove” something of some importance. That’s when facts matter. But, what is just as important (in my opinion) is if the facts are unvarnished and not tainted with prejudice. I would also add that a fact not told is as bad as a lie.
I am an ardent believer and supporter of “facts” when those “facts,” after being scrutinized without prejudice, are deemed to be “unvarnished.” Then and only then can a just “argument” be made.
Arguments are actually meant to clear the air and bring about change that is true and just. Unfortunately, arguments today fail to take “all” the facts into account. Despite the “fact” that I might want something to be “true,” I have to be willing to fully evaluate the unvarnished facts before what I believe is actually true,
I love to harvest facts. I harvest them by listening to different voices. I do not limit my reading and research to one set of “beliefs.” Of late, I am of the opinion that we have lost the ability to find out what is true. We are more interested in “proving” our point, instead of finding or learning the truth.*
The airwaves, internet, and print are filled with stories coming out on the June Sixth hearings and the Hunter Biden Laptop. In both cases, I don’t believe either the arbiters of the hearings or the investigators of the laptop are out to find out what is true. I fear that in both cases the decision of what is “true” was decided long before any hearings or investigations began.
We have become so divided that to use a trite expression we can’t see the forest for the trees. I listen to the ladies of the View and to the WABC radio hosts. etc. While I admit to being “View-sided,” I don’t take sides before I can harvest the facts. The problem with many facts is that they are not sagebrush. Facts have long roots that run deep. There is no denying, again in my opinion, that what happened at our Nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a travesty. The how and why it happened needed to be investigated. But, instead of an unprejudiced hearing, a mob mentality often tainted the proceedings.
There have been a plethora of “facts” divulged by the “witnesses” at the hearings. Is what they said the truth and nothing but the truth? Or were some of the “right” questions not asked because the answers might have challenged some of the other facts?
The same logic applies to the Hunter Biden laptop investigation. If the investigators are only out to prove they are “right,” more than likely they won’t be asking questions that don’t fit their scenario. There is, I “believe,” a greater truth in all that is happening today. And that truth is we are so divided and so angry that we have become blind to the truth. Hatred is killing all of us. If we can no longer be objective when it comes to finding the truth, we will be a nation built on a mountain of opinions.
And that I believe is our current state of affairs. Statements are made by politicians, broadcasters, and people in the media in a “factual” tone. Many of us take these statements to be solid, unvarnished facts when in truth they are not.
Call me an “unbeliever,” but when facts are thrown at me, I need to do some homework. And even then I often need to do more “fact-checking.”
OZ NOTE: To tie this into the YBR. Emerald City was not green. When the young man who landed in Oz after a balloon mishap was declared the Wizard of Oz, he set out to build “his” city. Since he loved the green of the Land of Oz, he called it the Emerald City…but since it was not green, he made all the people wear glasses with green lenses. The people never took them off. The fact that Emerald City was not green didn’t matter to them. Hmmm. Does that sound like us?
*I use the word truth here with some hesitancy because “truth” is a philosophical/religious construct. It is about “self-evident” matters. Truth and true are not the same things.
I have not posted a new blog since June of last year primarily because no one neither wants to nor cares to hear what I have to say. But, sometimes there comes a time when I have to open my big mouth. I chose to do it on my blog for a number of reasons. The main reason is that since relatively no one reads my blog I am shielded from an onslaught of attacks. (Rational responses are always welcome.) I have accounts on FB, Twitter and Instagram. I hesitate to use any of those forms of communication because by sharing thoughts on those venues you place yourself in the wild, Wild West where everyone shoots their mouth off even though their brains might be loaded with blanks.
I feel safe here on the Yellow Brick Road in a world that is so divided on everything. I was raised and educated on the idea that there is much more to an argument than arguing. Where I come from my intellectual training an argument is defined as “a reason or the reasoning given for or against a matter under discussion — compare evidence, proof. 2 : the act or process of arguing, reasoning, or discussing especially : oral argument.”
Today most arguments are reduced to arm wrestling where a winner has to be declared. Today with a plethora of venues (television, radio, podcasts, etc.) for voicing opinions we are at a point where one side hears what another side says (rarely do they listen because that would involve objective thinking) and gleefully jumps all over it for the sole purpose of exploiting not just the message, but the messenger. It’s what I call “got ya” warfare.
Unfortunately, many people who have a platform where opinions are the soup du jour, fail to understand that their opinions sound like facts. That’s where we run into a problem. Dressing up an opinion to make it sound like a fact is dangerous, especially when the supposed fact is actually not factual, especially when many listeners only want to hear what they want to hear.
I have no political bias or ax to grind. I would never align myself politically to anything. I, as I already mentioned, believe in a rational and reasoned approach to any argument. If after applying such I find the argument to be faulty, I will make a statement based on the evidence in the argument.
Now to the meat of this blog. It’s about Whoopi Goldberg’s stumble on the Yellow Brick Road. Far too many people are running through the streets of banal public opinion cheering that the wicked witch is dead. Most of those people have no “reason” to hold the opinions they hold. They are ecstatic because the “right” nabbed someone on the “left.” They want blood. They are not satisfied that Ms. Goldberg was placed on a two-week leave of absence. They want her out.
I am not a cheerleader for Ms. Goldberg. While I might not always be on the same line of the same page she’s on, I find many of her arguments to be reasoned and rational. There are times when I think she has dressed up an opinion to make it look like a fact, but even then I don’t believe she’s gone over the edge.
She has been castigated for remarks she said in regard to a segment about the banning of the graphic novel “Maus.” The hair on the backs of Ms. Goldberg’s enemies only stood up when she declared that the Holocaust was not about race. It was about man’s inhumanity against man. It was white against white, as she stated. (Kudos to Joy Behar who did interject that it was about race since the Jews had been identified by the Nazis as a race.)
Ms. Goldberg’s “opinion” on that matter moved over to the area of fact because if you follow her comments you will see that she was making statements of facts…based on what she believed to be true.
That’s what the maelstrom is all about. Her vocal critics are making claims that she minimized the Holocaust by “dismissing” it as a white-only issue. Since the show was live and the segments on the View are limited to just so much time, there was no opportunity to introduce the elements of real argumentation.
But you know what? We all missed something. The segment was not really about or positioned to be about the Holocaust. The segment was supposed to be about two school districts that had removed some books from eithera required reading list or from the list of books available for teachers to use.
I would bet that if you asked Ms. Goldberg’s critics what books were used for the segment, they wouldn’t be able to tell you. Well, I will. The two books used in the segment were “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Maus.”
Here’s some background on the reading controversy regarding those two books:
A Seattle-area school board voted to remove “To Kill a Mockingbird” from student reading lists this week, just days before news surfaced that a Tennessee district had, earlier this month, banned the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the holocaust, “Maus,” from its curriculum.
According to the Seattle Times, the Mukilteo School Board voted unanimously Monday night to remove Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” from the required reading list for ninth graders while still allowing for teachers to choose to teach the classic novel to students.
The board acted after months of discussion among teachers, parents and students, and in reaction to concerns over racism in the classic novel, first published in 1960.
In the Times report, John Gahagan, a board member since 2011, stressed that members were not banning the book, just removing it from the list of required reading. He said a 20-member instructional committee of teachers, parents and community members had voted by a nearly two-thirds margin to no longer have the book be required reading.
Gahagan told the Times he reread the novel, about a white lawyer’s efforts to defend a Black man wrongly accused of rape, last week for the first time in 50 years.
“It’s a very difficult book anda lot of thorny subjects are raised, and we felt that some teachers may not feel comfortable guiding their students through it,” Gahagan said. “It deals not only with racism, but it reflects a time when racism was tolerated.
“Atticus Finch, of course, is in everyone’s memory the great hero of the book, but in fact he was kind of tolerant of the racism around him. He described one of the members of the lynch mob as a good man.”
Unless you have been living under that proverbial rock, you should know that more and more parents are chiming in on what should and what should not be taught in schools. I believe parents do have a right to know what the curriculum includes or doesn’t include. I get scared when either side (the school’s curriculum committee or the parents) has an agenda that does not include open-minded thinking. (Here’s the rub. Open-mindedness has unfortunately become synonymous with liberal or far-left thinking. That’s not what it means. A mind that is open is prepared to let in new or different ideas. It does not reject an idea just because it does not fit a rigid measurement. I am also of the “school of thinking” that just because something is hip and current, does not mean it has to be embarrassed without some evaluation. Again, reason and rationality need to be part of the discussion.)
“It’s a very difficult book anda lot of thorny subjects are raised.” That’s a mouthful. Education should be if not difficult, at least challenging. I tell my college students they need to read things that make your hair hurt.
Is “To Kill a Mockingbird” appropriate reading for a third-grade, a fifth grader, a seventh-grader? Forget content for a minute and focus on what reading level the student is at the moment. That should be considered. And then consider the content. Is the student capable of understanding the content as written. Is the content out of context, simply meaning does the student have any idea what the story is all about? Does the reader have to know the “back story” to the story to understand it?
I read Mockingbird in 1964 when I was a sophomore in high school. I loved the book on many levels. As literature it was wonderful. As a lesson it gave me a lot of food for thought. It made me think. (That same year we read A Catcher in the Rye. One parent objected to reading a book her son told her was called Catch her in the Raw.)
Mockingbird was the first book Ms. Goldberg and the members of the View discussed. The racial nature of the book opened up Ms. Goldberg’s emotional spigot. She has had to deal with racism her entire life. Just the way she talked about removing such a classic book dealing with a topic that should be discussed in schools…and elsewhere, was very disturbing for Ms. Goldberg (as it should have been because once you “remove” such a book from a reading list, required or otherwise, it is so easy to remove “similar” books).
In the Goldberg story all over the news, not one person has even mentioned Mockingbird or that the real segment was about removing and banning books.
I could tell Ms. Goldberg’s heart was racing. When the discussion moved to discussing Maus, I could see Ms. Goldberg was still digesting the Mockingbird controversy.
Here’s the background on Maus:
On Jan. 10, the McMinn County (Tennessee) School Board decided to remove Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” from its curriculum, citing “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman as the reason for banning the book, according to the board’s meeting minutes. The nude woman is drawn as a mouse in the graphic novel in which Jews are drawn as mice and the Nazis are drawn as cats.
Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for the work that tells the story of his Jewish parents living in 1940s Poland and depicts him interviewing his father about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor.
In an interview, Spiegelman told CNBC he was “baffled” by the school board’s decision and called the action “Orwellian.”
“It’s leaving me with my jaw open. Like, ‘What?’” he said.
Instructional supervisor Julie Goodin, a former history teacher, told The Associated Press she thought the graphic novel was a good way to depict a horrific event.
“It’s hard for this generation, these kids don’t even know 9/11, they were not even born,” Goodin said. “Are the words objectionable? Yes, there is no one that thinks they aren’t. But by taking away the first part, it’s not changing the meaning of what he is trying to portray.”
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which does not play a role in McMinn County, noted the timing of the news on Twitter. Weingarten, who is Jewish, pointed out that Thursday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“Yes it is uncomfortable to talk about genocide, but it is our history and educating about it helps us not repeat this horror,” Weingarten said.
The U.S. Holocaust Museum tweeted that “Maus has played a vital role in educating about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors.
“Teaching about the Holocaust using books like Maus can inspire students to think critically about the past and their own roles and responsibilities today.”
Back to Ms. Goldberg. The View team immediately shot down the idea that the book was being “removed” because of questionable graphics. I believe using that as a reason was just a smokescreen for the real reason, i.e. teaching about the Holocaust in schools.
With two books being used in the same context, Ms. Goldberg’s initial comment about Maus not being about race came about, I think, because as a Black woman who knows about race in America, wasn’t able to apply the same term (race) when talking about Maus. Instead of supporting her understanding of race, I only wish Ms. Goldberg had asked the question: “As a Black American, is Maus really about race?” Her response in the form of a question would have moved the conversation into a broader understanding of what race is and what it was. (Coming from Irish stock, I am well aware that the British considered the Irish to be an inferior race with no hope of ever joining the “pure” white race of civilized people. For well over 300 years the Irish were demonized and this subject of genocide.)
The Nazis considered themselves a superior race and that Jews belonged to a “race” of inferior subjects. So, the Holocaust was about “race” in a sense that might have escaped Ms. Goldberg.
BUT…to nail Ms. Goldberg to the wall without taking a wider “view” of the segment is, in my opinion, wrong.
At 73-years of age, I have no reason to believe aliens will ever come to earth looking for intelligent life. Social media has the power to unite us. But instead of using it to our advantage, we have used it as a wedge to divide us even further than we are. The egg we call home has been cracked. I only hope that we don’t suffer the same fate as did Humpty Dumpty who could not be put together.
While this blog post might not be read by anybody, I needed to vent.
(Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
T. S. Eliot ended his classic poem East Coker (the second poem in his Four Quartets) with the line “in the end is my beginning.” I believe it is an appropriate line to end my mini-discourse on the times we are living in. I say appropriate because the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, just two weeks after the nation’s Capitol was breached, represents an end and a beginning. Sort of.
Constitutionally it does mark the end of the Trump reign and the beginning of the Biden era, but is there…or will there ever be…a beginning because the end has not ended. I say this despite President Biden’s heartfelt words meant to bring Americans together again.
75 million voters who cast their vote for Trump did so, in my opinion, because they felt ignored. Not only that, many of the Trump voters do not see themselves reflected in the faces of those people who call themselves Democrats.
I beg the following questions. What is a Democrat? What is a Republican? I have yet to hear in all my 72 years a believable answer to those two questions. An orange is an orange. An apple is an apple. I have no problem understanding what they are. I can’t say the same about a democrat and a republican.
If we are honest we would admit that the image we conjure when we think of a democrat of a republican is cemented to stereotype.
the sophisticated city dweller (top two) and the country folk (bottom two)
Of course that’s not true…but we all seem to think in stereotypes. Many Democrats think of Republicans as country bumpkins…a “class” of people who are Bible thumpers, who don’t have a progressive thought in their heads and who would join a mob of people and trash the US Capitol. Many Republicans think of Democrats as people with low or no morals, who have permissive attitudes about everything, and who pay lip service to a God that Republicans believe in.
We have set ourselves apart and claimed allegiance, not to the United States of America, but to a political party. It appears that Democrats beget Democrats and Republicans raise Republicans.
We call us the United States of America. Is that true? Was it ever true? If you look at presidential election maps you see blue states and red states. It took a civil war to let us all know something EVERYONE knew…that we were divided. The Civil War might have ended in 1865, but has the “fighting” really ever ended? While we talk about a wall on our border with Mexico, we never talk about the walls that separate one state from another or one group of people from another. Those are the walls President Biden needs to talk about. Those are the walls that won’t come down with legislation or national guard interference. They have to dissolve because we want to dissolve those walls. And the only way they will dissolve is if people of reason from all political parties bring an end to the hatred in this country that is fostered by political partisanship.
There were many signs of hope at the inauguration. Unfortunately, politically inspired sentiments have a short expiration date.
I found the voice of Amanda Gorman to be a voice that could help dissolve our differences. Her recitation, I believe, could be the beginning that will put an end to the hatred that divides us.
All Dorothy knew after falling into Munchkin Land was that if she wanted to get back home she’d have to go to Emerald City where she’d have to ask the Wizard to help her. She didn’t have a GPS. She didn’t think she’d need one since all she had to do was follow the Yellow Brick Road. However, she came to an intersection where she had to make a decision. Which way should she go? She posed the question out loud. To her surprise, her question was answered when the Scarecrow told her she could go “that way” or she go could go “that way.”
Following some small talk with a self-acclaimed “brainless” creature she and the Scarecrow were off to Oz. Did you ever wonder why they chose to go in the direction they did? As luck would have it, they chose the right” road because it did lead to the Emerald City. But, how do we know that the two roads she didn’t choose might have also ended up at the gates of the Emerald City? Considering the ardor of her journey, might the roads not traveled have been better for her? Had she chosen to follow either of the other roads she would more likely than not have ever met the Tin Man and the Lion. But…who knows who she might have met.
Aren’t we all like Dorothy? We are told to go and live our lives. We set out on a road that is usually straight and narrow. It’s not until we come to an intersection when we have to make a decision. Which road do we take? Unlike Frost’s poem where the traveler has to choose one of two roads that diverged in the woods, our choices are not always that limited. And as we get older we realize there are consequences that go along with the road we choose.
I fear that when it comes to politics our roads are Frostian. While we are not forced to take one political road over another, we are limited. For some reason taking the left road puts us on the Democratic path, while going right we are following the Republican path.,
As long as I can remember, it did matter what political path you chose. In fact people identified with the road. They would die on that road. They would support any candidate of that road’s persuasion…no matter who or what. They would grow to loathe those people who elected to choose the other road.
I am not stuck on the intersection. I just have chosen not to choose one of the two roads because it seems that once your choose a road you must pay full and total allegiance to all that road stands for.
And that I think is why both of the big roads lead to hell. Because people are either following the Democrat Brick Road or the Republican Brick Road they are blinded by the light.
Did I ever think Trump was worthy of the office of President of the United States? No. Did I think Hillary Clinton was worthy? Not so much. The only difference between the two of them, for me at least, had to do with their character. I didn’t trust either of them as political leaders because I personally don’t believe in any politician. I think all of them are full of BS. They are consumed by power and control.
As repulsed as I was by Trump’s character, I didn’t hate him. That doesn’t mean I thought he was good for the country. That only means that our fragile electoral system had put him in the White House. I had faith in our three branches of government with its check and balances.
I did not like the fact that the Democrats set out to defeat him after he “won” the election. But, I was also smart enough to know that it was a big numbers game that had more to do with the number of Democrats or Republicans in the House and Senate than it had to do with those same people representing ALL their constituents. And while voters can vote a Republican/Democrat in or out in Congress, an appointed Supreme Court Justice is horse of a different color. Giving Trump the power to nominate a SCOTUS member was anathema to “Democrats.” It was just another thing that elevated the hatred between the two parties.
Party politics is, in my opinion, what has polluted our spirits. The pollution has flooded the news networks, cable shows and all forms of social media. We are drowning in hatred. Instead of anyone throwing us a life preserver, we are being pulled underwater because we have allowed a political party’s ideology to fill our pockets with heavy stones.
As tragic as the Covid pandemic is, hatred is worse. There is now vaccine for Covid. Is there one for hated?
Preface in the name of transparency: I could never run for political office because I don’t wear a hat I could throw in the ring. I never have and never will wear a MAGA hat. I also won’t wear a hat bearing any symbols of the party that embraces donkey icons.
The 2020 Presidential Race on the YBR. Here we go again.
This is not the first presidential race where I scratch my head and say, “is this the best we can do?” And while every presidential race is important, this one, I firmly believe, carries with it a weight that might even surpass that of the elections during World War I, the Great depression, and World War II. In 2020 we are going to the polls not only to elect the next president of the United States but of a world leader with 20/20 vision because POTUS has to have a world vision.
I ask, is this possible since we have, for lack of a better name, Muck and Mire running for office.
So we are all on the same page here, let’s refer to Mr. Funk and Mr. Wagnalls: muck is slimy mud while mire is deep mud.
Donald Muck is, without a doubt, slimy mud. Putting aside both the ass-kissers who would follow Mr. Muck into hell and the brainless haters of the Muck who wouldn’t approve anything he did even if he walked on water, he is slimy. Giving him credit where credit is due and calling him out on some of his most egregious decisions, there is something slimy about the man. And that is not meant to be a disparaging term for a man who holds the highest office in the land. President Muck came up through the slime that comes from years of wheeling and dealing, rolling in the money, playing kissy-kissy with mindless jet-setters, and playing the part of a celebrity.
There was no way that anyone who lived such a life could not have been covered with muck. And as far as I know, there doesn’t seem to be a cure for muckiness because an inflated ego can never be cleaned.
At this point in time it appears the former Vice-President Joe Mire is going to be the candidate endorsed by the Democrats. Joe Mire appears to be a nice and decent guy. In fact the first word that comes to mind is “harmless.” Harmless? Is that the penultimate quality we want in our next president? He might have served as vice-president under President Obama for eight years, but the only image I have of him reminds me of a great-uncle who smiled a lot, but was never in the room when important matters were discussed. (And let’s be honest, Obama was playing it politically cool during the early days of the Democratic run-for-the White House.)
Joe Mire didn’t get to his political pinnacle the same way Donald Mire scaled the heights of richdom, but Good ‘ol Joe is deep in the political mud. He played the right games, kissed the right assess, and made the most banal comments to get him where he is today.
OMG! Muck and Mire! If there is a God can we all get down on our knees and pray for a do-over.
My gut tells me that the next four years are going to be wasted years. The Dems don’t want to present us with greatness in any shape and form for fear that it would destroy that candidates political career in a race against Muck. And of course any sensible (if there are any left) Republican realizes it would be impossible to offer America another candidate.
Politics is not only a dirty game, it is sinful. Our two party system is totally outdated. It’s like an eight-track player in a day when everyone is streaming their music. Instead of having only two boring stations to listen to, people are listening to their music, their way.
At my age I won’t live to see it happen, but I pray that my children and grandchildren will live at a time when instead of another presidential race with the next Muck and Mire, they have a chance to vote for Ready or Willing and maybe a third candidate Able.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a candidate who was really ready to take the presidential oath of office and swear they would uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. How refreshing would it be to have a candidate ready to consider the needs of ALL Americans without playing petty party politics..even if it mean only serving one term. Can you imagine a president ready to take on the challenges of helping the world become a place where all people are all entitled to those inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness!
And what about a Willing candidate? Is it possible to have a president who is willing to break the chains of partisanship? Can you envision a time when President Willing doesn’t have to reach across the aisle because there is no aisle that divides Congress? What a new day it would be if we had a president who was willing to put the people first instead of the party.
Candidate Able could also be a viable candidate, but, they might not be necessary as long as both candidates Ready and Willing were able to lead with the qualities found along the Yellow Brick Road… intelligence, heart, and courage…to do the right thing.
(Please note that no alcohol was consumed while posting this blog.)
Along The Yellow Brick Road 