Category: News of the Day

Once again Kanye West has been called out for his lack of etiquette and frankly, ignorance. According to CNN, he and his wife, Kim, were attending “The Cher Show” on Broadway when one of the performers caught Kanye on his phone during the performance. The performer tweeted to Kanye that he might want to pay attention to the stage rather than look at his phone.

Kanye did apologize, but the incident underscores America’s obsession with the cell phone. I am glad the performer called out Kanye. It’s time for all of us to learn some etiquette. Here are my tips:

• Put down your phone when having breakfast, lunch or dinner with your friends. Here’s a concept – look your friends in the eye and have a face to face conversation.
• Put down your phone when you are walking in a store, sidewalk, mall or anywhere where a lot of people walk. Most times these people are not paying attention to what’s around them. That’s when a trapdoor should open up. Bing! Bam! Boom! That will teach you.
• If you follow the previous bullet point, you shouldn’t be walking around a store talking aimlessly to the air. Yes, I am talking to you folks that like to carry on a conversation while shopping. Especially annoying are those folks who gesture while they talk.
• Put down your phone when you are in the theater, at a play or anywhere where you are supposed to be paying attention to others. Calling Kanye – put down the bleeping phone!
• And of course, put down your phone when you are driving. Many states and jurisdictions have passed laws prohibiting holding your phone while driving. Don’t be that idiot holding your phone when the police ride by. Put it down!

Our phone does a lot, but it doesn’t do everything. You can go for a few minutes or even a couple of hours without grabbing your phone. Enjoy the silence of common sense.

The federal government on the Friday after Thanksgiving released a report on Climate Change that stated the effects of the weather phenomena associated with an increase in global average temperatures is getting worse. In the United States, flooding, hurricanes, wildfires are increasing, and these weather issues pose a serious threat to America.

Whether you believe in Climate Change or not, shouldn’t we do our part to protect the environment and the world we live in? Don’t we want to live in a healthy and clean world? It doesn’t take much to protect our environment – all it takes is common sense. Industries should limit emissions and manage working lands. People and communities should find ways to conserve critical lands including forests and environmentally-sensitive habitats, and everyone should do their part to protect our waterways.

There are many ways for us to protect the place we live – all we must do is use common sense and have the will to implement those common-sense measures.

Earlier this month, a 69-year-old man from the Netherlands petitioned the government to change his legal age to 49. As stated in this NPR article, he feels 20 years younger, and he claims doctors told him he has the body of a younger man.

He said his age limits his ability to buy new things like a house. Hmmm.

On the surface, it sounds like an intriguing concept until you realize he has an ulterior motive. He wants to date more and listing his actual age limits his dating ability. Well, well, now we come to it. You just want to have sex with more women.

Here’s an idea – just be yourself and tell the truth. I don’t think starting a relationship on a lie is such a good idea. Even if he wins the petition, he is still living a lie. We all know dating can be difficult and the older you get, the smaller the dating pool becomes but if he is as vibrant as he claims then finding a woman won’t be that difficult.

At the end of the day, you are 69. Age doesn’t have to determine your fate. You can be 69 and act like you are 49 and no one will challenge you. Again, a young acting 69-year-old should be able to find a woman. The generosity of women to date some of us bums never ceases to amaze me. We men are very lucky.

On a side note, if he truly feels young then he shouldn’t have to use Viagra. Let’s see how young you really are.

America is becoming a society that is offended by everything. You can’t say anything about anyone without someone feeling offended. Comedy has always been society’s way of laughing at itself, but now it’s under attack. Thanks to social media someone always takes issue with a joke or light-hearted comment.

Sometimes people tell bad jokes with no intention to harm. Recently, Pete Davidson of SNL was vilified for making a bad joke about a congressman who lost an eye in war. Davidson said the guy looked like a porn star from the 1970s. It was a bad joke. It wasn’t done with malicious intent. People were mainly upset because he made a joke about a military veteran who sacrificed his eye in the fight for America’s freedom.

I understand people being a little upset but it was just a bad joke. Due to the uproar, SNL invited the congressman to come the show the following week to make jokes about Davidson. The congressman even wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post to make the point that it was nothing more than a bad joke. No harm, no foul.

This situation exposed a troubling road that America is going down. America is becoming angry and joyless. Are we going to become like the world portrayed in Fahrenheit 451? Will jokes be outlawed? Will laughter in public become vilified? We all know there are instances where people go too far with jokes or worse – they promote an “ism.” Those situations should be called out, but when society takes everything you say literally, you become nothing more than a robot – emotionless and inhuman.

Let’s use common sense before passing judgment and condemning on social media or anywhere else. You might find out it was nothing more than a harmless comment. And you might even laugh.

After the 2018 Midterms, Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was quoted saying “there are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American.”

Let’s be real, if you are uncomfortable voting for someone of another race then that idea might make you a racist or at least prejudice. The word “racism” is used too often and is thrown around cavalierly but this definitely straddles the prejudice/racist line.