The Queen of Bargains is ready to give it all up
The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
We live in a complex, exciting and dangerous time when social media and 24-hour entertainment networks give everyone an open microphone. The potential benefits and pitfalls loom large. Free speech has never been put to a greater test. The most recent example of open mic derangement syndrome comes courtesy of comedienne Kathy Griffin. It is the latest episode of an American exercising freedom without self-restraint, hoping a groveling apology will undo all harm. “I am sorry. I went too far. I was wrong,” Griffin said. She apologized for creating and distributing a disgusting depiction of the decapitated and bloodied head of President Donald Trump. CNN fired her, and rightly so.
An apology cannot undo this. The trauma this caused Trump’s son, 11-year-old Barron, may remain in the boy’s psyche forever.
“Trump family sources tell us Barron was in front of the TV watching a show when the news came on and he saw the bloody, beheaded image. We’re told he panicked and screamed, ‘Mommy, Mommy!’” TMZ reports.
In what universe is this acceptable behavior on the part of a nationally prominent celebrity or anyone else? Griffin must have known better. This is not the imagery one expects on TV in a civilized society, battling daily the sinister desires of enemies abroad who take joy in decapitating Christians, Jews and homosexuals.
Griffin’s abysmal judgment came just after The Denver Post fired sportswriter Terry Frei for tweeting he was “very uncomfortable” with Japanese driver Takuma Sato winning the Indianapolis 500 on the day before Memorial Day.
Frei also apologized, saying he should have known better. You think?
The list of public figures fired, shunned or embarrassed for tweeting, posting or speaking before thinking is growing long and distinguished. It seems some people don’t learn from the mistakes of others. They say and do as they please, then apologize.
Even before the rise of social media, we had Jimmy the Greek insisting that blacks were “bred” to be better athletes than whites. The obligatory apology ensued, followed by a pressured retirement.
There was Howard Cosell’s “Look at that little monkey run!” Apology ensued, followed by a pressured retirement.
Paula Dean’s show was canceled after she admitted using racial slurs. Don Imus was fired for insulting the Rutgers women’s basketball team in a manner considered sexist and racist. White House correspondent Helen Thomas made political waves for suggesting Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine.”
Even the president of the United States has the public on edge each day, wondering what boundaries he might defy with his next early-morning tweet.
The architects of free speech, and other freedoms protected in the Constitution, anticipated users would overwhelmingly exercise common sense and decency.
Griffin’s offensive and potentially dangerous depiction of the president is probably legal but tests First Amendment boundaries. Government cannot punish even the most offensive forms of expression.
It cannot exercise prior restraint to prevent egregious messages, for which we should give thanks. The founders forbade prior restraint, counting on the culture to use self-restraint instead.
Free speech does not mean anything goes. Malign Jews, blacks or any demographic, and the culture can and will revolt. Employers, fans and friends will cut ties. They have every right to do so.
A society built on freedom should favor courtesy, kindness and decency. That means Americans should think before they speak. From the Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
President Trump was elected on a pledge to put “America First.” But that doesn’t mean alliances should be secondary. Strong bonds are in the country’s best interests, and straining these ties is counterproductive in an increasingly turbulent world.
But that’s what Trump did with his profoundly bad decision to take America out of the Paris climate accord, a move as diplomatically dire as it is environmentally unsound.
Allies had urged the president to remain in the pact. His rejection of it, and them, will weaken the Western alliance, and thus the U.S.
A preview of this erosion could be seen in the public distancing from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe’s most consequential leader. Trump’s rhetoric at the NATO and G7 summits prompted Merkel to pronounce that “the times in which we could rely on others are to some extent over, as I have experienced in the last two days,” referring to the G7 summit in which Trump would not commit to the Paris accord. Merkel added: “We Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands.”
Context is key: Merkel’s most pressing challenge in this fall’s election isn’t from the kind of far-right populists who threatened the political order in France and the Netherlands, but from the left.
And on the wider scope of U.S.-European relations, the president’s previous dismissive attitude toward NATO and his hectoring of allies falling behind the targeted defense expenditure of 2 percent of GDP had already strained the alliance at a time when transatlantic cooperation is needed more than ever to meet the threat from countries like Russia and transnational challenges like migration, cybercrime and, yes, climate change.
Trump should be seeking to tighten ties by clearly showing global leadership on issues of worldwide impact. In fact, the administration should seek to ink, not shrink from, transnational agreements designed to bring more order to an unruly world.
Instead it’s doing the opposite — not only with the climate agreement, but by jettisoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a blunder that won’t make America great again, but could do wonders for China, which has rushed to fill the void with its own trade partnership that won’t have anywhere near the environmental, labor and intellectual-property protections TPP boasted.
While Trump’s campaign rhetoric makes it highly unlikely that he would embrace the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a U.S.-European Union free-trade agreement, an unnecessary fallout over Germany’s trade surplus would be ill advised, especially since so many German manufacturers have U.S. plants.
Most won’t argue with the general principle of prioritizing this nation’s needs. But Trump, and the country, won’t succeed by economically, diplomatically and militarily alienating allies while isolating the U.S.
Y’all, it’s the end of an era. Connie, the queen of bargains, is ready to hang up her yard sale-ing hat.
I’ve mentioned in past columns that Connie, a resident of Canard Road, is an estate sale-ing fiend. And yes, I’m using “yard sale” and “estate sale” as verbs.
For the past four years, Connie and her husband have gotten up every Saturday (and sometimes on other days), hitched a small trailer to their car and scoured the front yards and garages of Floyd County and beyond for whatever treasures they can amass.
Truth be told, Connie’s heart is in estate saleing. She loves nothing more than digging through dead people’s belongings to find good deals on “priceless” antiques or “vintage” treasures she can load up in the trailer and add to her home’s decor.
And she has GREAT taste. She really has an eye for cool, vintage items, particularly those related to camping or the mountains or that have a rustic look to ‘em.
But by her own admission, it’s getting to be too much.
You see, Connie cannot pass up a good deal. Even if that means dragging home several pieces of furniture or art that she has nowhere to store.
And her husband loves it as much as she does. So there’s no telling what they’ll bring home after a day of bargain hunting across the county.
Her weekly finds may end up in her own home, but sometimes they’ll overflow to her neighbor Stacy’s house.
Stacy’s husband may arrive home from a hard day’s work and lo and behold there’ll be an antique china cabinet waiting in his carport for him to deal with or a rustic end table that can’t possibly stay outside so could he please find a spot for it inside.
Many of Connie’s purchases also find their way into the storage building of her daughter and son in law across town. They might come home one day and bounce to them (unbeknownst to them) Connie has stored a day’s worth of treasures in their shed because she’s got no place for ‘em at home. So they’ll keep the stuff and may even decorate their house using one or two items.
However, the next time Connie visits and notices how well a particular piece she bought looks in her daughter’s house, she’ll politely take it back right there and then, claiming that it’s hers and she now knows exactly what she wants to do with it.
Connie can’t stand for Ansley to have something nice in her home when it was Connie’s great eye that picked out the piece in the first place.
Now, she’ll give Ansley some very nice things she’s bought but only if she herself has no need or use for it in her own house.
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“I like to get into other people’s homes, especially the older houses around Rome and just treasure hunt,” Connie said when I asked her if she’ll miss estate sale-ing. “Sometimes you find something really great and other times it’s just a bust.”
But Connie fears that she may one day reach the level of Hoarder so she wants to quit now before it gets out of hand.
The best finds, she says, are the old LL Bean coats or the old Coleman coolers. She’s also found several sets of blow mold lights for their camper as well as owls, and anything camping related.
The years of vigilant yard sale-ing have certainly yielded their share of stories as well as treasures.
Like the time her daughter Ansley and I were at El Zarape Mexican restaurant and Ansley was describing these hideous rooster hangings Connie found at a sale. The roosters were made of BEANS.
Well we got up to leave and there on the wall of the restaurant were Connie’s bean roosters. Ansley was floored.
We immediately went to Connie’s house so she could prove to me that her mother’s eye for art matched those of a local Mexican restaurant and sure enough there were the bean roosters on Connie’s wall. I guess art is subjective indeed.
Or the time at an estate sale when Connie was so excited to find a beautiful, heavy door stop in the shape of a rabbit.
She was excitedly showing her husband when a gentleman walked past with a matching doorstop.
Connie was flabbergasted that there could be two identical door stops until her husband pointed out that they were, in fact, BOOK ENDS which would account for the fact that the two looked like a matching pair.
To this day Connie maintains that because she has only one, then it’s a doorstop. Somewhere in Rome someone else just happens to have an exact matching doorstop.
So I checked in with Connie today to see how she was holding up, not being to yard sale and all.
“I did backslide a little on Saturday as I was left alone for a little while,” she confessed. “I found a potting bench and some pottery for a really good deal. I did feel bad after, but you know...baby steps.”
And she says there’s not middle ground for her. She’s cutting out BOTH yard sales AND estates sales since “I am weak and can’t be in that environment.”
So please pray for Connie as she travels down this difficult road of self restraint. I just hope she doesn’t see a yard sale sign along the way.
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