Skip to main content

STICKS & STONES


SOUNDCLOUD AUDIO EDITION


If ever there was a time to consider the power of words it has to be during a presidential election.

How many times a day lately do we hear someone, usually a candidate or a candidate's hand-picked spokesperson say: "my comment was taken out of context" or "I was taken out of context".

Context: to repeat part of what someone has said or written without describing the situation in which it was said so that it means something quite different.

The notion of context may be the best excuse for criticizing ever conceived. we say something hurtful or blatantly untrue and then, when we get called out on it, we simply say. "you've taken my comment out of context".

Excuse my English, but with these politicians, that's pure Bullshit! They're professionals, they say what they mean and mean what they say.

I miss Kellyanne Conway, she was the master of linguistic manipulation, when she was blowing the dog-whistle for the President every mongrel in the neighborhood heard her, and when the press complained she would simply say "that was taken out of context".

As we begin the countdown to November 3rd, the dogs will be out of the pound and roaming the streets listening for the whistle.

With the debates and townhalls behind us and one Sunday left for the Talk Shows, where will Kellyanne be when you need her Mr. President?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

SILENCE IS APPROVAL~Jewish Meme

How often do we learn something awful, clam up, and ignore it, hoping it will go away.  It never does, it just gets worse and our silence becomes its enabler.  Life is like that, we don't want to get involved. We have enough to worry about and ignorance, after all, is bliss. Wrong, ignorance is acceptance. The easy analogy is governance. We sit in a management meeting or a board of directors where we become aware of something nefarious and keep silent for fear of being disloyal.  To speak up takes courage and courage has consequences. When a whistleblower comes forward they are vilified, they become the victim of power and power corrupts. We've seen this in Washington for years, management teams being selected for their weakness rather than their strength. Weakness breeds indecision and silence, strength breeds courage. A new administration always starts with a ray of hope that the management team, aka the cabinet, will be outspoken and advise and consent with courage, not sile

AROUND THE WORLD IN 23 YEARS~AZERBAIJAN

Sheki, Azerbaijan  This trip was a study in contrasts, the glamour, and luxury of the capital Baku and its Caspian Sea oil deposits and the third world poverty of its rural countryside and medieval agriculture. I was there to improve the latter, but what I found was surprising. In the end, it's not about oil or vegetables, it's about the human spirit. I took this photo of a 5th generation farmer and his 7th generation grandson after his wife had served us a modest lunch of homegrown vegetables and pork, the meat sliced razor-thin to stretch their budget after entertaining western visitors. I've never had a better meal, before or since.   Forget Baku and their moguls, the real Azeri's live on the farms, that's where I discovered how wonderful life can be, fewer conveniences and more love. This man was the perfect host, he offered us what he had, no shyness, no apologies just knowing that what he had would be more than enough. My life in the developing world changed m

IT MUST BE SUNDAY

" Life is like a river, if you cannot let go of the past, it will drag you down the stream.” ―Amit Ray I've Been Thinking... A few months ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about life when he said to me: “Maria, if you want something new, you are going to have to first get rid of the old. It’s the only way to make room.” Damn, I thought. Ain’t that the truth? One of my big New Year’s resolutions for 2020 was to clear out the old in every area of my life. I had made a promise to myself that this would be the year I would take a hard look at how I was living my life: my beliefs, my attachments, and all my stuff. I started sorting through things from my office, things from my time as First Lady of California, things from my parents, things from my kids (do yourself a favor and do not save all of your kids’ school things like I did), and so many other things that had found their way into storage when life got the best of me. In fact, I was already in the thick of shredding, di