End of our side versus your side?

I "watched" the President's State of the Union Address this year with friends on Facebook.

I don't watch what passes for television these days but instead get my media fix via the internet. A Facebook friend had posted a link to the yearly address and I opened it in another browser window on my computer monitor. This allowed me to see and hear the speech while commenting to my Facebook friends about salient points. Let me say that I do believe HOPE is a strategy FOX.

In these iffy times in world history we need hope and not doomsayers or sowers of negativity and venom. We need our lawmakers to make good use of their time in office and by that I don't mean in planning for their next run for office but to insure the well being of the nation and its citizens. We need you to put aside the rhetoric and work together. My friends and I discussed the points of the speech openly on Facebook even though we clearly had different stands on some of the initiatives highlighted. During the Bush years I became a closet Democrat for fear of being burned at the stake. That wasn't good for me or the country.

One of the best things about the President's State of the Union, was for me not the speech. It was the bipartisan seating arrangement. There are reasons that college stadiums put the home team fans on one side and the visitors on the other and it isn't the spirit of cooperation. It is to foster an adversarial atmosphere. And the Republicans on one side of the House and the Democrats on the other (a few scattered independents down the center) only made the US vs THEM atmosphere in American politics worse. It even allowed one Republican  in Obama's first State of the Union to feel supported enough to Boo. OMG was that embarrassing.

So while FOX is calling this a ploy or trick I am calling it a first step not unlike our first step by man for mankind on the moon.

Hatched last week by Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., the idea caught fire over the weekend after a poll showed a big majority of the public wanting lawmakers of both parties to sit together at the presidential address. A spirited round of private phone calls and e-mails among lawmakers followed, and by Monday at least five dozen House members and senators had announced they had bipartisan dates for the big dance.

Bravo! Let's make America work again.

If the Shoe Fits Wear It

As we approach Christmas the news seems to get sillier and sillier. Angelina Jolie recently criticized President Barack Obama because he had not gotten around to her treasured issue. (Frankly, I did not even bother to look at what the issue was).  BTW, Angelina, I think he has been a bit busy. There have been two wars to fight, health care reform, and saving the US economy from the brink of a depression. Though I doubt you have noticed any of that.

And it seems that Bill O'Reilly of Fox News (I have put news in italics because I believe it is misused) feels he has been maligned in an episode of Law and Order: SVU. The episode deals with a serial killer of illegal immigrants. In one scene, a character named Randall Carver, played by veteran actor John Larroquette, is sitting on a park bench talking to Fin, the detective played by Ice-T. In defending the actions of the man who killed the immigrants’ children, Larroquette's character says, "Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, all of 'em, they are like a cancer spreading ignorance and hate...They've convinced folks that immigrants are the problem, not corporations that fail to pay a living wage or a broken health care system..."

Well, yes. So what is your point Bill? O'Reilly called the "far left" Wolf (creator of the show) a "despicable human being" whose show is "out of control." I wonder if it has yet occurred to Mr. O'Reilly that most of us viewers would have hardly noticed if he had not called it to our attention? But then that would require thinking. My father used to always say, "If the shoe fits, wear it." Obviously O'Reilly has chosen to wear this particular pair of shoes left hanging casually hanging around a television show. A fictional television show.

In the top news stories on Yahoo's News page the O'Reilly story was first. Lady Gaga's (who in the #@$@ is she?) reindeer hat was second, and the "shocking" news that Tiger Woods was taking a leave from golf to tend to home matters was fourth or third. There was a story about a ten year old iceberg drifting toward the Australian coast that merited a read.

Definitely the silly season! Except this is beginning to seem the norm on news shows and news internet sites. Maybe the word news needs to be in italics all the time.