2000-08-31 - 17:54 MDT

August 31, 2000

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I tried to make this entry last night. Hope it flys tonight.

The end of August and things are going so durn fast that maybe it will be a Monopoly Game thing, Pass Thansksgiving and do not collect 200 turkeys -- and then go directly to Jail until Christmas. That's the way it feels to me. There has been just too much good stuff crammed into just eight months, so maybe the prospect of empty time boggles me. But I have some schooling to put myself through here, and work on my book, so maybe time will be full.

Our Denver paper, The Rocky Mountain News yesterday, other than the usual, grisly gore seemed to be speaking to me. Ed Stein their political cartoonist and a man who can see life as it really is, had a hummer of a cartoon in yesterday.

Two people -- one a "wanna be young" type with the fashionable pigtail, but past 35 at least is excitedly talking to a exec type at his desk with a Blah Blah TV Network poster on the wall behind him. He says, "Okay, picture this: Reality Based TV. Real people, real events, and -- here's the twist -- we do it STRAIGHT ! We don't milk it for entertainment value !" Exec, with a big smile on his face says, "RADICAL! What do you call it ? ?" And the hyper guy says, "news."

Seems to me to be about the state of the art for TV news now. I remember the time when the anchors were dignified, serious and did the Jack Webb, "Just the facts, ma'am," reporting. Now all the news people are getting younger faster than I am growing older. Any way it was worth a chuckle on my part.

Looks like Bush is shying away from debates, And a federal judge blasts Texas for not living up to the terms of a 1996 consent decree or providing appropriate health care to more than 1.5 million children eligible for Medicad. And the poor suffer under Bush. Gee, I wish a real statesman would run for president, she'd have my vote.

But, there are admirable Texans, many many of them. Among the super-Texans is Molly Ivins of the Fort Worth Sar-Telegram. She soon will be finished with nine months of cancer treatments. She says, "First they poison you; then they mutilate you; then they burn you." The good humor she showed in her column is indescribable. She mentions that there is even a cancer humor site called "Tarry, Black Stools" on the Web. She evinces in her column the joy of still being alive and her gratitude toward those who helped her through her travail. She made one point that an acquaintance said, "He thought that the most important thing was not that I got all that help, but that I let people help me." And from my own experience I have noted a good part of our population become irascible when being supplied with needed help. And along with the learning to live with a different ballast that the loss of a breast causes, she comes up with, "And that brings us to another great benefit of the Big C. It's the world's greatest excuse. I've gotten out of more stuff I didn't want to do -- even more than the stuff I missed that I did want to do." And she ends her column, "But I now know what all survivors know, and I am grateful. So grateful." I may not have her exact words, but I think I have the meaning of what she said. I like her, the humorous, balloon popping, look at the reality which surrounds us in our life -- of hers is very refreshing. When I get to that, "Yeah, right" attitude, reading one of her columns bucks me up because it backs me up. I do not care what the yardstick says, "Molly is One Tall Texan in my book !" A vast credit to Fort Worth, and Texas.

Michael Kelly writes for the National Journal, of this paper I am totally ignorant of its denomination or political philosophy. But, he makes very good common-sense observations of "how it is now." In part he says, "If there is one article of faith that stands above all others in the creed of the new American establishment, it is that of Tolerance. It is the universal and paramount virtue, so embraced by the institutions of politics, the corporate world, the info/entertainment industry and the academy as to be unchallengeable. We are all Tolerant now; IBM is Tolerant; the Republican Party is Tolerant. We are so tolerant that, increasingly, we cannot TOLERATE any views that challenge our TOLERANCE. (my caps)" Reminds me of things I have read about the early settlers here in America -- supposedly they came to have the freedom to worship. And they did, and they saw to it that every one in this new land had the freedom to worship -- as long as they had the same outlook on things. Salem witch trials and other things too numerous to mention. He goes to great lengths about the muddled Boy Scouts of America situation. And it is muddled. For many years the Scouts and the Boy's Club were for boys -- the Scouts had a sensible creed too. I think they made one mistake though, they joined United Way and so mixed themselves in with groups that had different views about things like homosexuality, thus allowing a huge amount of grousing of where the money should go. The Scouts still are trying to hoe the old row with the hand held implement of our forefathers. According to Michael Kelly, "the Supreme Court found that the Boy Scouts of America is a private "expressive association" that it did not see homosexual conduct as compatible with that value; and that It's right to express and protect this value is covered by the First Amendment, regardless of whether anyone else approves." Years ago, while it was still called the Community Chest and money was given for charitable purposes, a person could stipulate where his individual contribution should be spent. Somewhere along the way after becoming the United Way their upper echelon decided to operate on a percentage basis from what I have heard. If the individual person still had that perogative of defining where his money should go, maybe then a state of equilibrium would be established. So it has now come to the point that some cities are not allowing Scouts to use municipal sites for camping and rallies. He ends his column thusly, "Citing no source, the (New York) Times noted that "some companies and organizations say the Scout's refusal to admit gays has come to seem almost un-American." "Almost un-American. Well we can't have that. It's a big country and God Bless the Framers, and all due respect to the Supreme Court." He closes with the wry comment, "But one thing we just don't have room for are values and behavior that are "almost un-American."

One thing now days that sticks in my craw is that the definition of tolerance seems to imply that tolerance is a state of all love and friendship, sweetness and light by all people to all people. But to me I keep thinking about the way the word tolerance is used in other ways, dosages of medicine and other medical and hygenic procedures sometimes say, "as much as the patient can tolerate." To me tolerance has an unpleasant taste -- a sort of gritted teeth, white knuckled with a grimace of disgust when going elbow to elbow with others having different views. Peacefully agreeing to disagree can't solve the messes we are now in.

I was a Boy Scout and later a Scoutmaster, my oldest Son is Order of the Arrow. But even early in my work life I worked amongst fine people who were gay, but not the "in your face" gays who antagonize people the same as the radicals and Activists do around the places where they try to deny a woman the right to do what she needs. There is no group who can be inside a woman's head nor can they know her medical and psychiatric condition nor will they come up with the necessary funds to have it DONE THEIR WAY. Yet they want to manditorily deny a medical procedure that is now a right -- whether the clinics are surrounded by a mob of screaming and grabbing people who have the attitude, "You may do whatever you want to EXCEPT, you may not abort.

I won't even say whether I am pro or anti abortion. I am not a woman but remember the time when a bastard child was an anthema and abortions were back alley, coat hanger things. I feel it is to broad a subject for any church group or political group to step in and interfere.

I feel we each should have our rights and freedom and should not interfere with others of different opinions and be able to still have our own views.

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