Facing Facebook Addiction

It is not classified information that I have become a Facebook junkie.

I love seeing what others post, I like being able to share political support online. I love petitions. If a petition is for a socially conscience cause, I'll sign it. I've therefore been neglectful of my little blog. But today is going to change that. The prime motivator was news about yet another incredibly inane law out of the Peach State, where we find the thriving metropolis of Sandy Springs, population 93,853.

It is in  Sandy Springs that while giving out prescriptions for vibrators seems more like a doctor's bad pickup line than good public policy, in Sandy Springs one actually needs a medical reason – and a doctor's prescription – to buy a sex toy.  Are you following me? Let me say this again: in the state where you can buy and carry a handgun, a woman must have a prescription to purchase a sex toy.

(Even worse than this very strange news item,, the article sharing this information was gleaned not from an American newspaper, but from The Guardian in Great Britain. Which also means once again we get to look super-stupid  beyond our 50 states.)

After recovering from my initial incredulity, it finally registered on a deep internal level that tired-assed, narrow-minded, old white men (with too few exceptions) are reading the handwriting on the wall -- and it pretty much says, "Dudes, your bigoted ways and your bigoted days are dwindling down to a precious few. You're not the big men on the national campus anymore."  

Some are having more difficulty reading it than others because it is written in cursive, but they'll  have someone read it to them. These are the men who tried to tell us blacks weren't smart enough to fly airplanes, and the Tuskegee Airmen came along and kicked their butts; They tried to keep us off tennis courts, then Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe and the Williams sisters kicked their butts again. We're skipping past quarterbacks and gymnasts and ballerinas and politicians and race-car drivers and TV personalities and coaches and musicians for now.

And so it has been for decades: blacks are not smart enough to hold down corporate jobs -- or become fortune 500 CEOs? You mean, like John Thompson (Microsoft), Ken Frazier (Merck); Ken Chennault (Amex); Don Thompson (McDonald's); Ursula Burns (Xerox); Clarence Otis (Darden restaurants)? 

Not enough smarts to become physicians, scientists Pulitzer Prize winners, presidents at Ivy League colleges? How's about Benjamin Banneker, astronomer, mathematician and author who built America’s first functional clock, or Percy Julian, researcher known for being a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants or Astronaut Ma Jemison. Oh wait -- did I forget Neal deGrasse Tyson, who drives bigots nuts because he's an astrophysicist and fearless when it comes to doing a science/creationist smackdown? The list goes on -- no doubt to the distress of deniers.

My main point here is there's only so much percentage in getting overly exercised over redneck mean spiritedness -- and I don't mean to insult rednecks. The likes of Cliven Bundy and his merry band of Neanderthals are spitting against the wind and deep down they know it. Can't admit it out loud, but they know it. So instead of hitting the "reset" button they throw temper tantrums in the form of  threatening federal agents and bringing assault rifles into restaurants and hurling slurs at the -- OMG, he's still here, thanks to a tripled Secret Service detail -- president who happens to be, well, you know...

We only have one weapon at our disposal to alter the environment relegating such obscene behavior to the nether regions from whence it came, and it is one of the most powerful weapons in the world:  If every one of us who says one vote doesn't matter would vote, we'd witness a sea change in how local school boards and city councils and state legislatures and even Congress would respond. I wish Godspeed to those holding out for Utopia. Meanwhile I hope I see lots of people at the polls for the midterm elections coming up and the big one in 2016.

I'll continue my addiction to stirring it up in Facebook posts. Which reminds me, if Mark Zuckerberg makes good on his promise to donate almost a billion dollars to non-profits, including Planned Parenthood, I'll forgive him for all his alleged weirdness. And I'm sure he'll be relieved to hear that.

See you on FB.