Month: August 2015

Random Thursday for August 13, 2015

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Once again, Random Thursday is on a Friday.

I wasn’t going to give Trump any more time, but then Mark Davis, someone I don’t agree with often, wrote this in the Dallas Morning News (Tuesday, August 11, 2015)

“Every once in awhile [sic], we all need an inner voice that says:  ‘I shouldn’t say that.  It’s over the line.’  If we ignore that voice and mouth off anyway and get roasted for it, we should not whine about political correctness.  Maybe we should look in the mirror and learn when to shut up.”

Someone else (not sure where I heard this) said, “The opposite of political correctness is not vulgarity.”

That’s enough of that.  Here’s a couple of great songs I want to pass along:

lucius

Two of Us on the Run by Lucius.  Here’s the video.

  • “There’s no race, there’s only a runner, put one foot in front of the other”
  • “And we’ll one day tell our story of how we made something of ourselves now”
  • I served communion at a worship service this week and the band sang this song.  As someone on the road to being a second career pastor, I thought about the story I’d tell one day.

Divisionary (Do the Right Thing) by Ages and Ages.  Here’s the video.

  • This song came about as the band went through a lot of changes:  the deaths of parents and birth of children.  Great chorus.
(Image is Lucius – Greek Theater – May 2, 2015 by starbright31 on Flickr.  CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.  Starbright31 didn’t invite me to the show.)

Apparently not just talking to Donald Trump

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By now everyone has jumped on Donald Trump’s remarks, but I want to add to a comment I made on my last Random Thursday post, based on a Facebook comment.  I wrote this:

“It used to be that saying “I’m not politically correct” was a way to try to communicate an uncomfortable truth.  Now it’s a lame excuse to give in to your dark side.  I’m talking to you, Donald Trump.”

Here’s why I wrote it:

During the Fox News presidential candidate debate, Megyn Kelly brought up the names Donald Trump has called women he didn’t like and asked him if that was the right presidential temperament (here’s the video).  Trump’s reply was that he was not “politically correct” and if Megyn Kelly had a problem, she’d have to get over it.  Trump’s problem is not a lack of political correctness, but a lack of common courtesy.  At one time, people who were not politically correct used terms like, for example, “illegal aliens” instead of “undocumented workers,” because they wanted to communicate the uncomfortable truth that these people were violating immigration laws.  Trump wants to broaden the term to allow being rude and crude.  If I call a woman a “slut” and then say, “I’m not politically correct, that’s how I am, so if you don’t like it, it’s your problem,” does that excuse my behavior?  Trump thinks it does.  I think it doesn’t.

I set a low bar for my expectations of Trump’s debate performance and he managed to go under it both in his exchange with Megyn Kelly at the debate and his tweets afterwards.

By the way, here’s something I didn’t make clear at the start.  Random Thursday is a collection of observations and thoughts that do not necessarily go together.  A Facebook comment linked two of the items, which I thought was a very clever observation, but any link I don’t explicitly spell out is unintentional.  Starting and ending with a Trump comment led some to believe this was a post about Trump, but it was not my intention to write a whole post about Trump.  Until now.

campaign in poetry

(Image is “politically correct” by Brett Jordan on Flickr.  CC BY 2.0.)

Random Thursday for Aug 6, 2015

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No matter how low you set the bar, Donald Trump finds a way to go under it.

In the midst of the outrage about the outrage over Cecil the lion’s death, there was an insightful comment in the Dallas Morning News, in a letter by Don McElfresh, published on August 3, 2015.  Cecil’s death represents a loss of innocence, because “. . . most people, down deep inside, want to believe that not everything is for sale.”

cow staredown

Jon Stewart ended his run on The Daily Show with a lecture on three different kinds of B.S.  “If you smell something, say something.”  Words to live by.  I’ll do my best.

An impressive article by James Fallows in The Atlantic (Jan/Feb 2015 issue) called “The Tragedy of the American Military” gives words to feelings I couldn’t express:  “Reverent but disengaged” and “we love the troops, but we’d rather not think about them.”  Doonesbury had a good one, too.

It used to be that saying “I’m not politically correct” was a way to try to communicate an uncomfortable truth.  Now it’s a lame excuse to give in to your dark side.  I’m talking to you, Donald Trump.

(Image is “cow staredown” by Ray Dumas on Flickr.  CC BY-SA 2.0.  Don’t look them in the eye.)