Political Correctness Truly Defined (Part 3)

In this part I will focus on an aspect of political correctness that needs to be addressed in society as a whole. It is how members of our society try to force the entertainment community to conform to their own expectations, freedom be damned.  I am referring to people who have a compulsion to condemn an artist for the words he or she writes or speaks.

On one hand, it would seem legitimate on the surface to condemn someone for remarks they feel are cruel and insulting toward political figures and other celebrities based on things they cannot help. The problem with this point of view is that it is often a delusion. Most people in the public eye put themselves there and they don’t care what those who oppose them think. In fact, they don’t even watch or hear those views, so for someone to rise up to the defense of someone they do not even know and try to crush the career of such a person seems to be rather pointless because their fans are loyal. Short of a national scandal, the audience will not abandon those they adore either.

However, when one stops to think about it, the question that needs to be asked is “Why is this of concern to them?”  In the first part of this series, I referred to Joan Rivers’ outspoken humor.  For many her humor in later years was not well-received by some people,  yet her fame continued to rise like a meteor. I can explain why that is.  She represented another generation entirely. It was as if in the present, anything resembling America of the past is becoming unacceptable by modern members of society. The fact of the matter is that many still keep those  values that old America held dear and there seems to be a move to revert to some of those values in light of recent world events.

If that happens, there is no need to go into an uproar over it.  Everything happens in a continuous circle of change. Some things progress and at times they reverse themselves.

However there seems to be a need among some people to take to social media to try to chide or “correct” or discourage the behavior of an entertainer–whether that entertainer be a comic, actor, actress or musician and it comes from both sides of the political spectrum. “I think you’re picking on the president and/or his wife based on appearance, race, way of speaking, etc….”  the list goes on.  Often these people demand total silence from anyone who opposes the policies of the current political leaders in this country. They will attack fans who support them, and often throw up insult after insult on their fan pages. This is especially true on Facebook.   However when those of opposing view were in power, those who agreed with that point of view could care less what was put up about them–yet the opposition made the same jokes and such. Why? They realize it is pointless to try to battle over something nobody has any real control over.

Quite frankly, when it comes to entertainment and the arts, Voltaire had the right idea about all of it–“I may not agree with everything you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

There will always be an audience for performers who have a fan base no matter how great or small. Most of those complaining are not fans of the acts and never were. When they start spewing vitriol, it only tells those that they are being hypocritical because on many of those pages they have to “like” the page of the person they are condemning in order to make a comment, and then they will post vitriol until they realize it does no good due to the fact that they are big fish in a little pond, OR until the admins of the pages ban and remove them. This is also true on the political pages.

If they keep trolling after that, then it is because they have a need to make themselves heard–just like an artist or politician that they are condemning. Taken in that sense, one could say that they are in the same club…Or can they? Either way, it shows those who think outside of the box how as a society, America has become well-known for its double standards.

Some fans even resort to attacking the fans for liking an artist.  Those are the ones who make fools of themselves by trying to win them over to their point of view when it absolutely will NOT happen. This is also true of people who support one person or another on the political pages. Ironically, in trying to box the fans and/or supporters of a person or group into a corner they end up putting themselves in one and it makes them look like they are true bullies, rather than intelligent human beings capable of conducting civil discourse.

By the same token, those who dislike an artist and/or the material in question have a right to express those views as well. They get enough of a bashing from those who aren’t fans for their behaviors that the opinion doesn’t make a difference. I have actually seen non-fans of artists support people that they are NOT fans of and defend them against trolls as well. Everyone has opinions and we all know what opinions are like.  I will not let either extreme dictate what they think I should or do not do. They do not live my life, I do. They don’t answer for my actions. I do. By the same token so do other entertainers, writers and politicians of all views and they should also bear these things in mind rather than take them personally. My father had a better piece of advice on such matters, and most have heard this before, “Consider the source.”

Besides all the above there is one basic fact of life that every entertainer or writer on Earth has learned one way or another and that is the fact that no one can please everyone, so why sweat bullets over it?

 

Yes, People Kill People But….

Look, I do not talk about this a lot. Yes, I DO support the right of EVERY law-abiding citizen to own a gun, but mental health in this country has to be addressed.  I’m not into all this gun grabbing crap a lot of people are trying to push for,  but I see nothing wrong with flagging people who have severe behavioral disorders from getting a gun. If people are arrested for domestic violence, robbery, assault, etc…they should automatically have their guns confiscated also until found not guilty–and if found guilty, they should not be returned to anyone in the household, but sold to cover costs incurred by the county and/or state.

I do not agree with the extreme left on this issue because they give off a perception that they do have a goal to take ALL guns away, or at least many of them do. However, these violent groups of people have to be dealt with.

I do not think it is that much to ask for. I’m not advocating limitations on all guns or gun sales, just to individuals who have such records.

Had such a system been in place in the 1970’s my stepmother might not have blown her brains out when I was almost 15. Was she mentally ill? Yes. We found out AFTER her death that she had been institutionalized. Her favorite thing to do when my dad was at work was to point that .22 that she killed herself with and put it to my temple as her method of “discipline” which was nothing more than terrorism in my home.

To this day, people, I can still feel the cold end of that gun at my temple. Sometimes I wake up dreaming about it. It was only after she died that I realized that this wasn’t just a surrealistic nightmare I lived in, but that she could have, at any moment, blown my brains out and anyone else’s in the house too.

Unless you lived through it, I know you can’t relate to it and more went on than that, which I will not discuss. Funny thing is I didn’t really realize what “normal” was until I got around “normal families” that sat at the table together and such after her death. I grew to pity her. Hopefully, she is at peace. I forgave her long ago, and despite the nightmares I have once in a while, I can still feel pity for her and understand that she could not help herself–but that the state failed to help her a long, long time ago.

I will say this much for those who have gone through something like this at the hands of a mentally ill relative or person close to your family. What helped me was to forgive her. Once I did that, the nightmares gradually happened less often, and became less intense. I actually stood over her grave about seven years ago and told her that I forgive her. Anyway, I hope that does help someone out there. I know forgiving her did help me.

A Day of Empowerment–Post High School

When I was grown, I married and ended up divorced.  I was raising my son Eric and one of the guys who bullied me in school asked me out saying, “I hear you’re divorced now and I was wondering if we–”

I responded by saying, “Stop right there!  I had nothing but crap from you in school. I wouldn’t date you if you were the last man alive either.”

He said, “Well we were just kids–you should be over that!”

I said, “Two years isn’t long enough. You’re in my past and you are staying there. Bye.”

I then shut the door in his face. Dad asked me what that was about.

My response was, “Getting the garbage out.”

He said, “Oh…Okay.”

Note:  If you were a bully as a kid, it really is not a good idea to go around trying to ask the victim out–especially when you were one of the ones that tormented him/her for the whole 12 years of school don’t ya think? Well at least he didn’t play the “selective memory card” as in saying “I don’t remember that. I’m sorry.”  I felt very empowered after that day in 1983.

 

A Passionate Hater of Bullying…That Would Be Me…

I want to make something clear to my friends and to my family. I loathe bullying whether it be school bullying or workplace bullying. I believe that stronger discipline must be used in public schools to stop school bullying because allowing it and/or enabling it and many school administrators and fake experts tend to do this, I fully believe that it leads to more devious and often violent criminal behaviors in adults.

I do not believe bullies fully change with time if they end up in positions of power. I believe this overloads their ego and makes them even worse. That being said, I am going to do all in my power to put a stop to this trend. Bullying is not the same as it was when I was in school. It’s not just the occasional fight or being shoved. In many cases it is assaults by multiple people, sexual assault, emotional abuse and some other things adults can go to jail for, like sharing inappropriate photos of a teenager on the net, cyber-bullying, etc…However, in some locales it is left up to the school district as to whether or not to press charges. Many won’t because if the criminal-in-the-making goes to juvenile hall, they’ll lose money for the school.  A school usually gets X amount of dollars for each student enrolled there from the government and state funding coffers.

Guess who pays for all this crap and such? We do…Carry on…In fact, RAGE on!

If you want crime rates reduced in adults, start taking care of the problems with America‘s schoolchildren who often learn these behaviors from their older relatives and stop letting these fake counselors give the bullying victim “resilience training” which only reinforces the idea that they must have done something to bring this on and need to change something about themselves. We should NEVER be penalizing a bullying victim–EVER and that is what resilience training is. It’s not the victim that needs to be worked on via therapy and/or disciplined, it’s the bully and/or the family thereof…PERIOD!

 

School is About to Begin, and Bullying Season NEVER Ends…

 

 

I am about to share a link here that many people will feel uncomfortable about when they watch it. The mother of this autistic child is disabled herself. She can’t protect her boy, not even in their own home if it comes down to it. I feel that the person responsible for this deed is every bit as dangerous as your local neighborhood psychopath. I hope this person gets caught and I think it fitting that this person should be totally OSTRACIZED by society.  There is so much hate in this person’s heart that he or she (and it is signed she, but one never knows) that this make him/her truly outright dangerous to others they don’t consider to be “fit” to live among us…

 

 

 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/the-incredibly-offensive-letter-sent-to-a-mother-with-an-aut?bffb

 

 

 

We live in an age where cyber bullying and such is on the rise. It is as if with each passing school year, the next generation is getting worse and worse. It is difficult enough when a child is bullied in school and then parents have to deal with all this crap therapy about “making your kid bully proof” is not going to solve it because it isn’t the VICTIM that is the problem. It is the perpetrator who is the problem and we need to get back to setting SEVERE consequences for cases of bullying that are as severe as letters like this, as well as physical and sexual bullying.

 

 

 

I am really tired of these so-called experts (and they are not experts because their therapies often fail)  preaching that all kids can be made to be “resilient” when nothing that kid did causes them to be singled out other than their appearance, gender, income level, color of their skin, sexual orientation or religion.  The bullying victims are targeted in much the same way a crime victim is–school is only the “rehearsal”. The real world is the “production” on stage.

 

 

 

Even Shakespeare said, “All the world is a stage.” and it is. However in a good production, the villain doesn’t usually win.  In this case the bullies are winning–or it at least seems that way. When these experts were allowed to come in and create diagnoses for bullying behaviors and phony treatments, the suicide rate among teens increased. These experts are quacks. Some of them do not have a license to counsel but are journalists riding on the coat tails of one  who never gets named, while using the case of a dead girl who committed suicide over the bullying to further his/her own career. I do not respect such writers. They disgust me.

 

 

 

Only one journalist bothered to name her source of information–and she wrote her book on the back of a dead victim. No names here but many know to whom I am referring. I am simply really fed up with the victims being further victimized or made to feel that they are collateral damage when it is the one attacking them that needs to be strongly disciplined.

 

 

 

These need to be strongly addressed in school or these bullies will be in the workforce terrorizing those under them.  When they are caught the price should be complete dismissal–especially if that person is an educator or a police officer.  If in sensitive fields like this, they should also have their licenses/credentials revoked.  These are the last people we want molding the minds of our children, OR having the power to mess up our lives.

 

 

 

I find it even more reprehensible that a so-called “adult” bullies would engage in such behavior to begin with and be allowed to continue it while hiding behind union reps and such…Keeping THEM away from all children is essential in my book.  In my opinion they are as dangerous to a child as a pedophile is.

 

 

 

Some states of the United States have implemented laws to address school bullying. Law prohibits bullying of students based on sexual orientation and gender identity Law prohibits bullying of students based on sexual orientation School regulation or ethical code for teachers that address bullying of students based on sexual orientation Law prohibits bullying in school but lists no categories of protection No statewide law that specifically prohibits bullying in schools (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

English: the picture consist of articles on bullying, I obtained it from public domain. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

Remembering the Monster (Part II)

It is  funny how when a child goes through abuse in the home, they feel that they did something wrong, or they said something to piss the abusive parent off.  However sometimes the abuser reveals the real reason for singling out the child. It is a lesson I know very well because it was taught to my abuser as well.

I am referring to my late stepmother.  As cruel as she was and as evil as she could be, I learned some lessons about her that did enable me to forgive what she did.  Does that mean that from time to time the shadows don’t try to creep up and remind me through nightmares and such? Absolutely not.

I remember well how I slept with the lights on after she killed herself with that same pistol she waived at my head–and sometimes she went further–she would actually put the barrel to my head, and I can remember how cold it felt to this day.  Often she revealed my existence as her reasoning behind her resentment of my presence in the family. The bottom line is, I stood up to her once I got older.

I find it also funny that when growing up, one thinks this is actually normal crap to deal with day after day.  Once she took her own life, and the shock of her death subsided, along with my self-loathing thinking it was my fault she did it, I began to get around ‘normal families“…You know–the ones where both parents didn’t fight and they actually had meals together at the table like we did before my parents split?

However, back to my point…She would tell me things her mother said to her such as, “…I don’t want you and I never did!”   Then she told me a story about how her two step sisters died in a fire that she believed her stepfather started. I wasn’t sure what to make of this story until I read it myself, but she was adamant that her stepfather set the fire.

I had a horrible tendency to turn my anger inward during and after those years. I remember hearing those negative voices when my stepmother committed suicide–and they were very “loud”, if you know what I mean. I kept hearing, “You should have done this!” or “IF you had done X then Y wouldn’t have happened.”  The bottom line is that there was nothing I did to cause it being that I was only around 14 and nothing could change it.  I had to work my way through that process of grief and self-loathing.

My dad was a total basket case, so I had to help arrange the funeral and pick the casket, as well as the dress to bury her in. THAT was the hardest part of that whole thing–having to help arrange it at 14. I am glad my sister and sister-in-law were around to help keep my head on track, and they did help me to handle this.  To this day I have an aversion to going into funeral homes even though I make myself do it. All it takes is the smell of the flowers or the sight of a black suit to send me straight back to 1978. I don’t know why but that triggers those memories in a huge way. I find it ironic that I knew more about her childhood–her parents names and such than my father did. I also knew that she had three sons taken from her in Red Bluff, CA in the 1970’s so if anyone is looking to find her, then contact me via email.

I struggled with trying to find reasons for what happened, and trying to make “sense” of it, but there is no “sense” when it comes to something like that or any unexpected loss, I think. There was also that voice that kept saying, “What if I had done ____ differently? Would it change a thing?”  I didn’t have a sounding board to take my frustrations out on so I turned to pen and paper, which was all I had at the time–aside from an imagination that when my pen flowed freely, the counselors became concerned.  I also struggled with the fact that there came a day when I fully realized that what went on in our household was NOT normal by any stretch of the imagination.

Then came the day I had to forgive her and then myself.  I realized that I both loved her and hated what she did, but realizing that she was not in control of her actions enabled me to forgive her and begin to rebuild from another starting point. I also had to forgive a few others in this process. When I say I had to “rebuild from another starting point” I am referring to the fact that after any traumatic event we can never fully be the person we once were.  We have to debrief ourselves a bit and then start reprogramming from that point, I think.

Living with her mental illnesses was one thing, but her behaviors also taught me how “NOT” to be a stepmother.  It also turned me off of the idea of internet dating and such because she WAS a mail order bride.  Anyone can put on any image they want to present themselves to be, but you never know what they are until you are with them.

I choose to play it “safe” and avoid that trap, hence the reason I don’t connect with anyone to go out with from the internet.  I have my friends I hang out with.  If I go out with anyone it will be with NO ONE that I meet on the web.

Does this mean I am lonely? No. I am alone but I don’t get lonely.  I have things to do and places to go and since I spent half of my life married, I’m in no rush. I am certainly NOT desperate either. Being single does not mean that my life is broken.

Now I want to say something else here.  I read Cinderella as a  child…I watched the version of it with Lesley Ann Warren and loved it.  As I got older, as in my late teens, I began to realize how much truth in  “Fairy Tales” really existed.  Her friends were mice–AT LEAST in the Disney version. My friend was a mouse named Brutus. There is also truth in the fiction between us all.  My fiction was that I was a princess or an angel in waiting…When I grew up, I realized that I am a statistic…A number…One of the many who fell through the cracks, but made my own way back out of them.

In fact, I think the song “Luka” fits more accurately–even though I’m not a boy.  After all, Suzanne Vega was right…She only hit until I cried. I sure as hell didn’t ask why when she went on these rampages either.

Many of these fairy tales were written with happy endings, but in life, would they have been happy? We may never know.   Look at “Sleeping Beauty“…The queen was pissed because she wasn’t invited to the Christening.  The only thing that woke Aurora’s ass up was her true love’s kiss.  What rubbish.  All of these fairy tales have the sabotage of the memes we were taught running rampantly through them.  The main theme being “Good prevails over evil”….Does it?   Or, do we simply hope for the best, block out the worst and drive on hoping the next day will be better than the one before?

Either way I drew more inspiration for my writing from “Dark Shadows” than I ever would any of these “fairy tales”.  I also drew from a movie called “Paperhouse” and ‘another one called “Spirit of the Beehive“. Perhaps it is because in the eyes of the child I once was, Barnabas (from “Dark Shadows”) could not help what he was and that enabled me to empathize with his fictional pain.  In my opinion, he was bullied too.

It Is Time to Criminalize Bullying at School…

Yes…I have been quiet as of late.  I have contemplated this school bullying issue again and again.  I will say this and you can find out for yourself.  Take the time to look through a high school rule book in Texas and compare it to the rules for offenders in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (which is in the offender rule book).  The similarities might shock you.

Why is it in schools they worry about the peach-fuzz Johnny is growing on his chin or the piercings Jenny has in her eyebrow but they say the bullying, which is actually either physical assaults or emotional abuse–not to mention cyber-bullying is a “phase”?  That, for lack of a better word, is bullshit.

The teachers are the “officers”–powerless to defend themselves and other students from bullies for fear of litigation or losing their job.  The Texas Youth Commission officers are not much different.  The administrators are like the prison wardens, only the prison warden has tools at his/her disposal to stop offenders from being bullied to the point of suicide and such.

Since the days of John Dewey, the school climate has drastically changed.  America has a growing population of gang kids and/or kids of hardened criminals rising up in the ranks of the students and they are creating problems on the campuses.  Family members often ignore or encourage the behavior, blaming everything on the teachers and admins or blaming the other kid (the victim).  When the hell did we start conditioning or students to be “good inmates”?  School should be a sanctuary for learning, not institutions for control and indoctrination.

The prisons have the Prison Rape Elimination Act in place to help protect offenders.  If society is so willing to protect them, why is it that we are failing in this nation to protect our children?  I think every parent who has a son or daughter being bullied should actually study the PREA.  The language in it is strong, but a new act can be drafted based on that to protect students from bullies.  Here are a few things I propose…

1.  Any time a student is found to have been bullied, the school must notify parents within 2 hours of becoming aware of it.

2. If a student has been physically assaulted, the bully is to be treated the same way as if he/she committed the crime of assault off-campus–meaning that being at school does NOT exempt students from obeying the law and does not give schools the option to NOT report crimes to the police department.  If they have to report child abuse when suspected in the home, then this should also be a requirement.

3. The school must report and prosecute all physical assaults and take measures to fully protect the victims of physical assaults of any nature, which includes sexual assaults.

4. Sexual assaults ON CAMPUS are to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and if it occurs on school property, administration should have to fill out incident packets to turn over to police officers for use in the prosecution of  the perpetrator within 2 hours of becoming aware of the assault(s).

5. Victims of bullying should never have to be moved to another school for protection. It is the bullies that should be split up and sent to other schools at their parents’ expense. Hit the parents in the pocket-book, they will learn to control their children.

6. Any school official not reporting bullying incidents to parents and/or taking proper action against what amounts to be criminal acts should face automatic disciplinary hearings and possible loss of licenses from the Texas Education Agency.  This will stop a lot of these administrators from enabling and becoming complacent.  They should also be able to face penal charges in severe cases and civil charges in the lower degree offenses if not reporting them.

7.  The way I see it, their rights end where the next victim commits suicide over the issue.  In cases where it is found that parents enabled their son/daughter to torment another student, they should be fined in successive amounts for their negligence in each offense. Money collected from fines can be used to pay for supplies for needy students and uniforms (if schools require those).

8. It should be expressly stated in the act that no teacher or school official will face penalties under the law for taking appropriate actions to protect themselves and other students from those who seek to harm them during an incident.  This way they can step in to break up altercations and such.  The staff should not be expected to take beatings any more than the bullied child.  This would give districts some teeth in dealing with bad situations.

9. All teachers and administration officials will be required to take PMAB classes to learn proper ways of restraining violent, out of control students.  Parents will sign an agreement that they know teachers are trained in this and that if their student gets out of control, they can be restrained, releasing the district from liability.

10. Students with severe behavior disorders that require psych meds will either take those meds or not attend school until they do so. Parents will make sure this happens or face child neglect charges.

11. Students prone to violent outbursts will not be educated in the regular classroom after 2 outbursts, but will be taught in a separate classroom provided and monitored closely.  After 2 outbursts this will be permanent.  This is only reserved for students with severe behavioral issues.

12. The profession of teaching in the State of Texas will become an “at will” position in order to effectively enforce bullying policies.  This means when educators aren’t doing their job with these bullies, they can be fired without all the union bullshit. If failing to report assaults and such to the police and to the victims’ parents, they should face the same penalties for that as for failing to report child abuse.

Anyway, these are just ideas I’m tossing around in my head. What do you think?

School Bullying has gone WAY too far!

I am really sick of high school kids committing crimes and then having it downplayed by the school district‘s labeling it “bullying“. When kids are going around assaulting other kids, sexually harassing them, etc…These are CRIMES adults go to jail for! Stop downplaying this problem by calling it “bullying” and address these crimes against our children for what they truly are–and for you school administrators that downplay this issue–shame on you! You’re not fit to be in charge of any child in a public school environment! Either man up and take care of the thugs or the litigation will after your districts pay some heavy fines! If it’s not stopped there, these kids may end up in prison anyway and you are the ones that wanted a “village” to raise the child…Well man up and do your bloody part! It’s happening under YOUR watch!

Here is a link to a story that should anger every parent whose child has ever been a bullying victim:

http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/mississippi/family-special-needs-student-attacked
This boy is a special needs student. He is paralyzed on one side of his body and has cerebral palsy.  Granted the kid threw a soda can at his attacker after the senior called him a name but we do not know what the victim’s mental age is and such–or even if he had good aim with the can.  If the can was empty, there was no reason to react in such a fashion.  The bottom line is, as a senior, this young man should have been mature enough to set the example for the other students and  to not go off as he did on a person with a disability.  PERIOD. Sorry but while I do think the Stokes boy needs to learn to ignore such crud that is said to him and probably have some anger management therapy, there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for the senior using the force he did to levy such an injurious and brutal attack.

I can assure you that if I were the principal of that school, that senior would at least be in ISS for a while…

I am not a big fan of Fox, CNN or any of the major news networks but when I see this stuff in more than 1 report, and the info matches up on the networks, I am most likely going to express my opinion on the matter.

 

Nana is on a Rant! ***HATERS YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***!

I have to be brutally honest here.  It is shameful when any writer uses their forum to abuse a child. PERIOD. I don’t care what the person’s credentials are or anything of the like. If I can tell they are writing in an irresponsible way, they will be called out on the carpet for it. I’ll be the first to do it because they make those of us who take our craft seriously look bad and we all get lumped into the same category after time has passed…

I cannot stand it when writers bully a child in the media, write an article on a movie or series they obviously did not watch all the way though, critique a musician’s album when they obviously only listened to one track, etc…These are not writers or journalists, they are bullies and armchair experts who don’t know what they are talking about. It’s that simple, and if they have a degree–shame on them.  They just made their own college look VERY bad when they do this garbage.  The reality is, a lot of them ignore what they were taught once they have the degree in their hand.

We saw this type of bullying when Gabrielle Douglas was attacked for her faith when she won the gold medal at the Olympics in London.  They also criticized her looks this week rather than praised her for her accomplishments.  Shame on those so-called reporters who brought it up. I lost respect for several of them.

They often mistake opinion for truth, diatribes for journalism and perception for reality–if they are not deliberately distorting it to suit their own purposes.

That being said, the negative commentary made about Gabrielle Douglas by these so-called “adults” is nothing more than cyber-bullying in my book. They have attacked a 16-year-old child for her faith, her hair, her looks and anything else they can think of to take the spotlight off what she accomplished in London.  The people that write such tripe also put down soldiers, honest people who work to make change in society and they play armchair expert on almost any subject known to man.  One can’t argue too much with them. They think they know everything. All one can do is when they find the place where they have distorted the truth, use their own words on them and make them eat that article for lunch.

I don’t care if someone worships Allah, Vishnu, God, the Great Spirit, little green men from Mars or whatever–there is never any reason on Earth to attack one’s faith, looks or their person, rather than focus on their achievements.  Anyone who has nothing better to do than launch personal attacks on someone has wasted this reader’s time.

I’ve called these so-called writers on the carpet for their tripe many times and will not stop doing it as long as such irresponsible writers abound…I don’t care if it is a so-called movie critic that didn’t watch the film or series past the first few minutes (or the first episode), a music critic that OBVIOUSLY only listened to ONE track on an album and then judged the entire thing, OR the mere bully who wants to attack a person who has achieved much simply because they don’t have what it takes to get out from behind their keyboard and make a difference themselves.  There are obvious ways to see who these people are. I learned to spot them years ago. They are a shame to the craft.  I may not be perfect at what I do, but that is what my friends are for and they see my writing LONG before  put it out there.

I feel better now…I shall now leave to go see the little man:

and he ALWAYS brightens my day!

And to all the haters,  racists and such out there–KISS MY FANNY!

The Bullying Issue…AGAIN

Alright, this is for those who have read my past blogs on bullying.  I have now come up with some ideas on how to resolve a lot of this, and it came to me when I found out a friend’s daughter was getting bullied and the school switched her classes without telling anyone.

First, in TX, that is NOT supposed to happen. Parents are supposed to be notified prior to schedule changes–esp. mid semester.

For one:  All schools should be required to report any bullying incident to the parent(s) of all parties involved within an hour of becoming aware of it.  That way the PARENTS can actually be involved in addressing the issue.

Two: NO VICTIM should ever have the same classes, lunch break or any extra curricular activity with the bully. Putting the victim in a class with the person who abused them is akin to putting a rape victim in the same room with his/her attacker. It is psychologically devastating and it is abusive of schools to do this to a child who has been bullied.

Three: IT should always be up to the parent(s) of the victim(s) whether or not to file charges–NOT THE DISTRICT. It is their child getting hurt.

Four: Bullies should not be allowed to ride the school buses. Make their parents responsible for their child’s transportation.  Bullies tend to act out on a bus a lot.

Five:  every state should add sections with protections like those mentioned above. At least it’s a start…

Given the fact that many of the public schools now feel like prisons to the victims, I say an extension of the PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) should be expanded to include a rule that public school personnel who fail to tell parents and take measures to protect the victim should be held liable–especially if they fail to report the incident. If that incident is a sexual assault of some type they should be required to tell not only the parents but the police themselves.   Even if it is not a rape, but molestation of some type, it is still a crime punishable under the law. However many districts choose to sweep this under the rug–unless it’s an adult doing this to a child.

If steps like these are not taken soon, then it is children who are victims of violence and emotional abuse that are being silenced and then left behind. Think about that. This being said, I feel that aggravated suicide must be made a punishable crime in all 50 states.

The student population has a growing number of children from gang families coming into the school systems. Many of those have family members that are incarcerated and have learned their violent behaviors at home. You also have “average kids” who bully because they are abused at home.  These things must be addressed in order to make a safe learning environment for all children. Any district failing to enact measures to protect these children should be subject to loss of federal funding also.

This bullying which leads to violence, death and aggravated suicide must stop and it must stop now.