As I walked out of the house this morning, to take advantage of the beautiful spring weather, I decided to start weeding my flower garden and as I pulled the little weeds that were beginning to spring up and cleaned away leaves and debris from around the flowers, I began humming whatever tune that happened to pop into my head at the moment. This morning the tune that dropped into the mental music slot in my cranium happened to be Hello Dolly sang by Louis Armstrong and as I happily hummed it as I worked, I started thinking about that song and the musical it came from. Whenever I hum tunes and then begin to think about whatever I’m humming, I often think of the context I remember the tune in. Whenever I think about the tune, Hello Dolly, I instantly think about Carol Channing’s smile. The beautiful Carol Channing starred in the musical in 1964 and it was a huge success for Hollywood at that time and Carol Channing was a much adored and beloved film and stage actress (when I was growing up we called females that performed on stage and screen, actresses…somewhere along the line I suppose someone got offended and the rush by the thought and speech gestapo to correct the “wrong” was swiftly enacted).
I recall reading a story a few years back about Carol Channing where it was revealed late in her life that her father was half black and she had to conceal that fact because if people had found out that she was any other race or color other than Caucasian then she could not have achieved any level of stardom in Hollywood as an actress. Sure, she may have been able to find work, but she would have been limited to roles that were specific to non-white actors…and that is a shame. My thought progression continued and I started thinking about my country’s history of racism and how for too long that people were snubbed, castigated and looked down upon as second class citizens because of their skin color. I then began thinking specifically about this, relating to Hollywood, and how not only were people judged and graded by their skin color, but also because of their sex (more thought progression).
This made me begin to think about the Me-Too movement that suddenly popped onto the scene and began to get coverage all over the media a couple of years ago…and I guess that this movement, at its core, is a good thing because nobody should have to be judged on the casting couch or to be forced to have sex just to try to get a start or to get noticed in Hollywood (or in politics, it would seem) but that’s the way life was in America, and especially in Hollywood, for much of this country’s history.
That being said, the problem with the Me-Too movement (and others like it) is that liberals and the media get hold of something that has a good solid basis and purpose and they proceed to destroy it to push and achieve a certain agenda. It appears most things that the media become involved suddenly is taken way, way off path to where it becomes unrecognizable to its original founders and they end up politicizing it and ruining the original purpose of it. This coupled with the fact that people are no longer innocent until proven guilty, but are instantly adjured guilty and are demolished by the media while their employers are publicly shamed by bleeding heart liberals to fire them, clearly demonstrates that the “innocent until proven guilty tenet that has been part of our justice system, is tossed out the window. In addition, if these folks want to try to prove their innocence, they have to fight the almost insurmountable uphill battle with their own funds as the media that happily annihilated their lives and reputations, clean their razor-sharp talons of the affair and scan the horizon for other victims like digital carrion birds.
Those folks that consistently hijack the desires to right long-term cultural wrongs, end up turning something good and righteous into these runaway movements that, through false narratives and paid hirelings (who on cue pose as victims to assist the attempt to destroy the current target), have bastardized and politicized years of hard work by good people to the point that they have almost become meaningless and are completely unrecognizable from their original purpose. Also, it seems today you can’t read or watch anything coming from the political left without hearing them accuse someone of being a racist, to the point that they have severely diluted the word as they bandy and fling the accusations about without cause or merit and often in a laughable way, that all they end up doing is jading the public to the point that if someone is justifiably accused of racism, it will not carry the weight or truth that it should. Americans are finally waking up and are beginning to turn a deaf ear to all these adulterations of the truth. You can only cry wolf so many times until folks begin to stop listening to you.
Jim
4-17-20
jimbussell 