Erma Bombeck Warned Us

We are all Erma Bombeck now.  I was perusing the Pinterest pins and surfed over to a site containing Erma Bombeck quotes when I realized that at least half of the bloggers I read are following in the ink stained trail of Erma's wit and wisdom.    But then I've always thought Erma was far more political and downright cagey than she was ever given credit for being. 

Some of the best quotes of hers from the page on women's history on about.com:

• When mothers talk about the depression of the empty nest, they're not mourning the passing of all those wet towels on the floor, or the music that numbs your teeth, or even the bottle of capless shampoo dribbling down the shower drain. They're upset because they've gone from supervisor of a child's life to a spectator. It's like being the vice president of the United States.

• It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding. 

• Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-rearing, they are unemployed.

But I think my favorite one is this one:

• We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attaché cases and our three-piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.

What, oh what, wisdom would Erma have for us in these days when men with severe and degenerative cases of '50s-ism? (def: mental illness in which an illogical and irrational desire to return to a non-existent time period during which June Cleaver and Donna Reed existed and roamed the Earth).   Pssst.  Wake up!  I think right now is the "worse" she was talking about! 

So what are you going to do for International Women's Day this year?  I think we should all do something.  Ideas?  Oh, International Women's Day is March 8th. 

Boortz Calls for Violence on the Same Day Giffords Leaves Hospital and Arivaca Family Murder Trial Continues

I don't do a lot of cross-posting on my blogs, but today I have to.  I have tried to write an entry several times today.  Several situations are swirling around in my brain space,  and they all involve violence and public complicity in that violence. 

Ed Schultz gets pulled from the air for a week for using the word slut.  Neal Boortz, major Right Wing radio personality, calls for his listeners to arm themselves and kill "thugs," a thinly disguised term for young brown or black men, and women, in the streets of Atlanta, and I hear no outcry from the right to control their own.   Where the hell is the rage when Beck or other Fox "news" people regularly allude to violence against our political figures. 

Gabby Giffords, my Representative to Congress, was able to go home with her husband for the first time in over 5 months since the attempted assassination of her, the life altering injuries of several others and the death of 6 Tucson  by a very disturbed man that I still believe, as I wrote shortly after the shooting, was impacted and influenced by a culture of hate that is one of a number of subtexts and dialogs that run through my beloved Tucson.  There was a call for civility that was anchored in Tucson.  That call is still being broadcast from Tucson.  If you don't believe me, just read Ashley Burroughs post on BlogHer today who doesn't candy coat a dern thing (can you use the word dern without tooting?) and still remains a positive, constructive person and a force for good.   She and her Big Guy chose to live in Tucson because they picked up on all the wonderful sub texts that far outnumber the negative ones in the Old Pueblo.

The trial of the third person charged in the Flores family murders is also going on here in Tucson.  Some things that have not been clear before in the two trials of the non-locals who arranged the murders of a family to finance more hate crimes.   This third person was known to the family.  As much as I cannot understand how anyone can shoot a child, the pure evil of killing a child of a family you know is beyond my ability to even describe.  There was something under the surface of the daily lives of these people that never should have been there.  Smuggling pot across the border.  Why is it illegal?  Why do we not just let people grown a couple pot plants? There would be very little market for illegal marijuana smuggling then and much of my figurative backyard would not be littered with the bodies of people drawn into the lure of "easy" money from the Mexican Cartels.  If we had Fair Trade, living wages, and corporate regulation there would not be mass migrations of economic refugees to attract the hateful attention of people competing with the economic refuges.  I don't like the Pulp Fiction feeling that I sometimes get that something has been going on nearby and recently -- you can find that feeling here in Tucson. 

So I guess I should just say that, living in a city where people have been shot en masse recently,  I'm more jumpy about violent speech than the average person, and I want the people of America to take responsibility for what they say, do, and listen to.  If you don't speak up then you are just as guilty of any violence that stems from whatever you remained silent about as the actual perpetrator.  We are a democratic republic, yes, but that does not come free.  I'm quite frankly tired of "I don't want to get involved" types enabling hate speech.