Diners, volunteers enjoy Thanksgiving tradition
Troy Hawkins smiles as he eats a Thanksgiving meal served by H-E-B employee Dora Galindo during the grocery store chain’s 28th annual Feast of Sharing on Tuesday afternoon at the Palmer Events Center. A team of 1,400 area volunteers served the free meal to more than 14,000 people. Free flu shots were offered and about 20 nonprofits provided information about services.
Sadly, there’s much to be sad about as we’re fixin′ to fix the fixings and preparing to check off what we have to be thankful for as we celebrate Thanksgiving 2017.
On a micro basis, most of us have much good stuff for which to be thankful. On the mega basis, as always, there’s good for which to be thankful and bad for which to be concerned. The two sometimes overlap.
It’s bad that there is so much evidence of men behaving badly. It’s good that there are victims courageous enough to force us to deal with something somehow ignored for far too long. (I’m in mind these days of a long-ago female colleague who used to say, “If they can send a man to the moon, why don’t they send all of them?”)
Is anybody surprised that there has been bad behavior in show biz? And I doubt anybody is surprised that there has been bad behavior in politics as well as the media and business worlds.
But is there anybody not surprised by the allegations involving former President George H.W. Bush, allegations that have tarnished his reputation?
The elder Bush occupies a special place in our political consciousness. Will we ever again see a high-level politician who doesn’t draw hatred and vitriol from people who disagree with him or her politically? Bush earned respect, regardless of your political leanings, through a lifetime of public service.
You’ve seen the recent allegations against the elder Bush. Initially, they involved fairly recent incidents in which he told a bad joke (about how his favorite author and magician is David Cop-a-feel) and grabbed three women by the buttocks as he was photographed with them on different occasions. One woman accused Bush of groping her buttocks in 2003, when she was 16 years old. More recently, a Michigan woman, now 55, told CNN Bush had squeezed her buttocks during a 1992 fundraising event for his re-election campaign. In all, seven women have accused the former president of groping them while posing for photos. It’s improper and offensive.
Bush spokesman Jim McGrath has said, “To try to put people at ease, the president routinely tells the same joke — and on occasion, he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner. Some have seen it as innocent; others clearly view it as inappropriate. To anyone he has offended, President Bush apologizes most sincerely.”
I waited for the topic to come up Nov. 16 when Mark Updegrove, former director of the LBJ Presidential Library, returned for a program about