You don’t know her as Youree Dell Harris, but you know her as Miss Cleo.. Today the world found out that the famed would be could be isn’t psychic from TV commercials died at the young age of 53..
She was famous in the 1990s with her “call me now” tagline.. I recall her as I grew up on late night TV… the wee hours of the night for me were filled with many things. And at many points, the background noise of my youth was this woman’s voice..
But her fame also led to questions about her past. In 2002, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published an investigation that revealed she had a list of aliases and a longer list of former colleagues on the local theater scene who said they had been cheated out of money and questioned her Jamaican background.
“She had no Jamaican accent — she was born and raised in L.A.,” a former cast mate told the paper. (A copy of a birth certificate posted by BuzzFeed in 2013 showed that Ms. Harris was indeed born in Los Angeles on Aug. 12, 1962.) Information on her survivors was not immediately available.
In 2002, the Psychic Readers Network and Access Resource Services were the subject of a federal lawsuit that ordered the companies to forgive $500 million in customer fees. The networks agreed to stop selling their services over the phone, and, according to the Federal Trade Commission, the companies agreed to pay a $5 million fine.
And with that, the star that was Miss Cleo failed to shine bright at night.
What makes me sad is that she was not Miss Cleo. She was a human being.
““To me, this is not so much about gun control as it is about what’s in men’s hearts. Until we come together as a nation, as a people, to heal as a people we will surely perish as a people””
The suspect has been identified as a black male named Gavin Eugene Long of Kansas City, Missouri, sources tell CBS News. He was born on July 17, 1987.
One suspect was killed and two others might still be at large, Casey Rayborn Hicks, a spokeswoman for the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office, previously said. However, Louisiana state police said Sunday afternoon there is “no active shooter” in Baton Rouge.
man with a gun opened fire on police officers in Baton Rouge on Sunday, injuring at least seven – including three who are feared dead, an official said. Police received a call of “suspicious person walking down Airline Highway with an assault rifle,” a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. When police arrived, the man opened fire. The remaining officers are hospitalized in critical condition, the source said. The victims were from Baton Rouge Police Department as well as East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office, another official said.
Fears today that events of this nature will continue.. Fears on the eve of the Republican convention in Cleveland..
One of the greatest things I have ever seen (and I have only seen of of the 8 episodes so far) is the original NETFLIX show STRANGER THINGS..
There are so many things to speak of.. the 1980s nostalgic feel (especially for people like me who were incarnated in then Reagan era) .. The throwback quality to a Speilberg or Stephen King story.. the mystery of Will Byers and the town of Hawkins, Indiana coupled with some amazing acting and character development..
The music of the series, besides featuring some pop hits of the 80s, also sounds a lot like the score from IT FOLLOWS. The set designs and color is true to the 80s and is similar to the movie HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, which was also set in the 1980s but made in the modern era..
Thus far, only one show into the season, I have nothing but praise for STRANGER THINGS and honestly can’t wait until my next free hour to continue the ‘binge.’ A binge on shows between work, parenting, and soccer practice can get rough.
Spoilers will abound if you read certain reviews.. I will not spoil anything, but instead just argue that you need to join in the fun and get watching this series.. I implored friends and family. And now you, my readers..
Update (8:28 p.m.): A tragedy occurred on Saturday, July 16, 2016 at Knoebels Crystal Pool. A young boy was found unresponsive by a lifeguard who immediately initiated emergency care. Additional care was provided and he was transported to Geisinger Medical Center, Danville. The Knoebel family and team members had been hoping and praying for the best possible outcome, but are saddened to have learned from local authorities that the young boy has passed away. Please join us in keeping the boy’s family in your prayers.
— Original Post (6:26 p.m.): Today, at approximately 3:00 p.m., a young boy was found to be unresponsive in Knoebels’ Crystal Pool. Emergency care was immediately administered by Knoebels’ lifeguards and first aid team until he was transported by ambulance to Geisinger Medical Center in Danville. Please join the Knoebel family and Knoebels team in keeping the young boy and his family in your prayers.
I have long enjoyed Knoebels. Even this year, I wrote a post about just how cool of a place it was and how, after 90 years in existence, it should be on your summer bucket list if it is not already..
If my memory serves me right, another child died in that same pool in 2011..
The emotions of sadness were expressed by most of the commenters on the Facebook post. Some of them were actually there, feet away, when the child was pulled from the water. They describe a sad and chaotic scene.. Some, of course, blame the lifeguards and parents..
But I am going to refrain from blame. Facts will work themselves out.
And no Facebook comments with blaming anyone will bring back a child who tragically died in a park that brings fun food and fantasy.
He is going to be included with a horror flick called HAPPY BIRTHDAY.. he is going to play a hard-partying cowboy named Kasape Suka in horror-thriller Happy Birthday. The film’s campy trailer finds Tyler’s character at a Mexican bar, where he boozes, gulps down pills and watches a cock fight.
THE CURSE OF THE GETTYSBURG NATIONAL MILITARY PARK STONES!
The letter pictures is an example of what so often comes into the Gettysburg National Military Park.. People who takes rocks from the fame Civil War battle town in Pennsylvania send back letters of remorse.. people who claim that ever since they took those ‘cursed’ rocks, there have been a series of unfortunate events plaguing their existence..
And yes, people are returning the rocks with them.
It is important to remember that removing rocks from the park is a violation of Chapter 36 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Section 2.1(a)(1)(iv) prohibits “Possessing, destroying, injuring, defacing, removing, digging or disturbing from its natural state a mineral resource or cave formation or the parts thereof.” If these individuals had been caught in the act, they would have been cited and fined $100, plus a $30 processing fee. All in all, they may have preferred that.
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So no matter how pretty that rock is, or how small it might be, or how much you really want something to remind you of how much you love Gettysburg, please remember that it needs to remain right where it is.
Ghostbusters slowed in its weekend estimates from some of the hyper projections we saw on Friday, now heading toward a $45M weekend opening after winning Friday with a $17.1M gross..
Now it would appear the final tally will be well below any previous projections ..
Sony is claiming publicly to Deadline and other box office reporting outlets that the newest incarnation of the film isn’t a bomb.. But s domestic $45 mil puts pressure on overseas markets–one market that was taken out of the running was China, which banned the film..
CNN has some great information about the Mike Pence Veep spot..
Trump wanted Christie, it would seem.. Advisors didn’t. The kids wanted Newt. In the end, the Pence push became substantial from advisors. Especially one..
Pence was hesitant to fly to New York, knowing that events did not unfold as he expected, it could be a humiliating trip and cost him the governor’s office. But he boarded the plane. Trump was frustrated by reports that he had picked Pence while he was “six hours and three time zones away,” one senior adviser said. He was still troubled by his conversations with Christie – wrestling with the instinct to go with his advisers’ guidance or his gut.
The fact this has been the first decision not made naturally by Trump could also show it was his worst..
It’s extremely similar to the way Reagan was forced by …the same campaign advisor Manafort!…to put Bush Sr on the 1980 ticket. It may have solidified a certain branch of he party but it wasn’t who Reagan wanted either..
If this Trump choice fails it would be mostly due to the fact that it wasn’t his choice..
It was he safe route. A pale white male with white hair and someone who, as CNN pointed out, will turn bright red as soon as Trump tells an off color joke.
Nice is a tourist magnet, not just for foreigners, but for the French as well. There were huge crowds here for the July 14th celebrations.
I am a journalist and we journalists knew there was a risk of this. It was in the back of our minds throughout the weeks of the Euro tournament. But the Euro went off without a hitch and now I found myself in Nice – touristy, beachy, laid-back Nice! – and there were bodies everywhere.
Some were tiny bodies. Kids. Their parents must have been so happy to give their kids a treat and bring them to see the fireworks on July 14th. And that’s the heartbreak of it all…“
‘We have taken control’: Turkish military open fire on civilians as they launch coup to depose Islamist government – while President Erdogan ‘hides in a hotel room’ and Facetimes a TV station to urge his supporters to fight for him
Turkish troops have launched a military coup according to the government with helicopters firing on capital Ankara
Turkish PM Binali Yildirim told reporters: ‘We will not allow this attempt’ although the military said they are in control
Explosions and gunfire have been reported in several locations with fast attack jets patrolling over the skies
The Turkish military claimed they have taken power in order to protect the civil rights of the population
President Recep Erdogan has used ‘FaceTime’ to call on the population to take to the streets to oppose the coup
As military-grade robotics get cheaper and more capable, someone will arm them and put them on American streets.
Robot-maker Sean Bielat says he’s fine with the Dallas Police Department’s apparently unprecedented use of a police bomb-disposal robot to kill a gunman on Thursday. “A robot was used to keep people out of harm’s way in an extreme situation,” said Bielat, the CEO of Endeavor Robotics, a spinoff of iRobot’s military division. “That’s how robots are intended to be used.”
Joergen Pedersen, the CEO of RE2 robotics and the chairman of the National Defense Industrial Association’s robotics division concurred. “If these robots are used in manners for which they were unintended, we would expect that the officers who are there to keep citizens and themselves safe would use good judgment where the application of lethal force is a last resort,” he said.
On Sunday, speaking to Face the Nation, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings blessed the operation. “The chief had two options and he went with this one. I supported him completely because it was the safest way to approach it,” he said.
The House failed to pass legislation on Monday to enhance a provision of the Patriot Act that encourages banks to tip off federal authorities to suspected cases of terrorist financing.
Many libertarians warned of potential privacy violations if the measure went into effect, which helped prevent it from reaching the necessary two-thirds majority to pass through the fast-track process under which it was considered.
While the bill won a simple majority of 229-177, it didn’t clear the supermajority bar needed for passage. The procedure is typically used for noncontroversial bills that pass easily.
This is a really good read from NEWSWEEK magazine.. the biggest threat to the United States right now is not from a foreign enemy.. but from one already here.. And the receipe for disaster lately has been cheap heroin..
From NEWSWEEK:
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) remain the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States; no other group can challenge them in the near term.”
In other words, Mexican cartels have surpassed other international criminal organizations including the Italian mafia, Asian drug rings and the previous preeminent drug importer, the Colombians, to become the No. 1 source of dangerous illegal drugs in the United States over the past decade.
If heroin has yet to directly or indirectly touch you life, it will … give it a bit of time. It has far reaching and decimating..
And this year, a presidential campaign, what do we hear? Nothing much at all about this issue..
Nothing at all about the heroin epidemic and how to treat it.. Nothing at all about how this nation is falling apart at its core fabric..
Just a thought.. vote for someone who actually wants to change things as opposed to sweeping the problem under the rug..
That change may not necessarily be more law enforcement tactics. Not more legislation. But less.
I may or may NOT have mentioned this.. but my wife and I figured that it was not only good to have our son Ayden sign up for soccer, but that we should ALSO be the coaches for the team.. Call us crazy..
Call us insane.
Field clean up day was this past weekend.. The season starts Monday with a 7pm practice..
Yes, there will be strangeness… arguments.. (There already was an arugment over what dimension the field should be and whether it was being lined correctly or not — wonder if the same people who argued saw the abominble women’s game in the outfield of a baseball field?) But it will be rewarding..
We both want to be involved as much as possible with our son’s life as he gets older .. we also love soccer. It seemed like the perfect match.
….but there will be those moments when you question whether you’re in over your head.
The first moment for me could very well be tomorrow night when a group of 4 and 5 year olds stare at me like an alien as I tell them to stop touching the soccer ball with their hands..
It will be fun.
And YouTube will get plenty of hits from me … “how to coach kids soccer”….
…and a tremendous amount of people online in Centalia related message boards or Facebook pages are angry and want to run the guy out of town. People called him names like ‘bottom dweller and scumbag’ .. they also wanted to take him to unmentionable parts of the former town.. there are hostile ugly comments being thrown at him. It’s all weird.
Weird because…I actually wanted to do this.. he beat me to it!
I saw the number of people per weekend going to this town to tour and saw a goldmine. The fear deep in my soul held me back.
But the strange outcry of people anti-hot-dog vendor surprises me a little.
People: The town is over. it’s done.
If you think that the 200+ tourists per weekend is big, it will only get bigger.
As a former resident, I may be alone here, I am not angry someone is selling hot dogs in Centralia Pennsylvania.
They go to space with perfect vision and come back with a loss of acuity.
THE POST:
In 2005, astronaut John Phillips took a break from his work on the International Space Station and looked out the window at Earth. He was about halfway through a mission that had begun in April and would end in October.
When he gazed down at the planet, the Earth was blurry. He couldn’t focus on it clearly. That was strange — his vision had always been 20/20. He wondered: Was his eyesight getting worse?
“I’m not sure if I reported that to the ground,” he said. “I think I didn’t. I thought it would be something that would just go away, and fix itself when I got to Earth.”
It didn’t go away.
During Phillips’ post-flight physical, NASA found that his vision had gone from 20/20 to 20/100 in six months.
This is not a joke (but mostly a story showcasing how the US Women’s Soccer Team gets unfair treatment on a regular basis) ..
A match between the Western New York Flash and Seattle Reign FC of the National Women’s Soccer League on Saturday night was played at Frontier Field, a baseball stadium in Rochester N.Y., that could hold a pitch just 100 yards long and 58 yards wide according to match announcers.
Carli Lloyd, Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan and Ali Krieger called this “shocking,” “embarrassing” and “unacceptable,” and tweeted at the league’s commissioner, Jeff Plush.
Richards’ performance as Kramer was so frantic that the crew kept extra hinges handy, in case he destroyed a door during one of his character’s manic entrances. It created problems, though, since Richards’ antics made his castmates laugh during filming and break his focus.
Armstrong writes: “When Alexander laughed during a scene . . . Richards’ begged, ‘You can’t, please. You don’t know how hard it is for me.’ (Because the laughter meant they had to reshoot the scene.)”
Because of Richards’ intensity and immersion into the role, his co-stars, writes Armstrong, “didn’t feel like they knew him, even later, after years on the set together.”
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Alexander and Louis-Dreyfus — both of whom were concerned early on about the show’s lack of conventional plot lines — had their own problems: Each believed they weren’t getting enough screen time.
As the show became a success, the cast found themselves in strange situations, including a bizarre feud with Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold.
The SECRET LIFE OF PETS is making over $103 million this weekend.
And deservedly so. The secret life of parents: Sometimes we like these movies.
This was the rebound movie for my family this week.
My son, Ayden, had a 105 temp this week and a terrible viral infection that caused one ER visit and another doctor visit … it was just an awful week. By the end, however, a full recovery was made (kids are so quick with this) and we decided Friday to go to see this movie.
There is something about movie theaters that cheers my son up.. and me.. and my wife. After a week of hell and sickness, we needed the rebound movie.
Minus the flu recovery, the movie itself was pretty entertaining.
I’d relay this to you: Parents, take your kids to go see it. You’ll like it too. And your child was sad/sick/depressed over the past week, it’s especially good..
The talk show legend wrote this on Facebook late this week:
Update on me:
I am now home after five days in what must be one of the greatest Hospitals in the World, St Rose. I am not in good shape, so weak I can not dress myself. I want to Publicly thank my Wife Airyn who never left my side and helped every moment day and night and still is. I went through every test known to Man. Had a hole punched in my Lung, MRI, Pet scans, X-Rays, more blood tests then could be counted, was on Morphine the whole time. Had so many IVs running it started to get hard to find a vein. If I make it I will have the best Wife in the World to thank as well as the best Hospital. Can’t really type more now but that is the current situation, more later.
Art
He was in for days for complications of COPD and pneumonia ..
President Barack Obama on Saturday rejected the notion that this week’s stunning violence is a signal that the U.S. has returned to some of the darkest days of its past, saying that as painful as the killings of police and black men were, “America is not as divided as some have suggested”
THE NEW YORK POST printed before the 5th officer perished.. but their cover this morning will be blazing through the early streets of New York City and beyond .. they are calling it a “civil war” and showcasing images of dead police officers next to their squad cars..
Those who slept peacefully through the night and are waking up to news this morning are going to have their souls rocked..
I woke up around 230am as my phone kept buzzing with breaking news events.. I tried to ignore at first until I realized just what those breaking news alerts were saying…
My mind turned into panic about the country.. Obviously I could not fall back to sleep and become glued to news coverage of the Dallas carnage.. I even turned on Coast to Coast AM and listened to George Noory take calls and try to get a mental handle no the mess that is occurring right now..
“I didn’t see anybody else get shot, just the cops. I saw cops getting shot, right there in plain sight. While we was running, like, they just kept shooting,“ Washington said. "We didn’t know where it was coming from”
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These are the words of
Cortney Washington to NBC Dallas-Fort Worth in the chaos after the Dallas police carnage ..
The shootings occurred as Americans nationwide took to the streets to demand answers over the killings of two black men in two days. They wept, marched and chanted “Black Lives Matter."Crowds gathered outside Gov. Mark Dayton’s residence in St. Paul, Minnesota, miles from the spot where an officer killed Philando Castile in a car on Wednesday.
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Gunshots rang out Thursday night during demonstrations against the shooting deaths of two African-American men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota.
A total of 11 officers were shot, Dallas police said. A standoff is underway as authorities try to negotiate with a suspect in a downtown garage.It was the deadliest single attack on law enforcement since the 2001 terror attacks, when 72 officers died, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
A total of 10 police officers were shot by snipers during the protests, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said. An 11th officer was shot during an exchange of gunfire with one of the suspects, authorities said.
It is unclear at this time how many snipers were actually involved .. no motive has been released..
If you were in Washington DC last night (or many other East Coast cities) you hardly saw the July 4th fireworks shows. It was cloudy, murky, ugly, and rainy as a storm zipped by the major metros just in time for dusk fire shows..
If you watched PBS’ version, you saw something very different: Other fireworks shows from curiously clear skies.
Perhaps it’s only in D.C. where a PBS show can become a scandal.. But it did just that. Even forcing PBS so say sorry..
In the old days before the Internet people may not have questioned this. In the new era where information runs wild, it become an instant obsession of Twitter and social media.
PBS defended itself first, Tweeting:
We showed a combination of the best fireworks from this year and previous years. It was the patriotic thing to do.
When they realized they sounded like Twits they apologized over the social media airwaves for “for any confusion this may have caused”..
The fourth of July upon us.. the fireworks, the nostalgia.. the pride. I have always had mixed emotions no this holiday– more so than any other one as a matter of fact. It’s the birthday of American independence, it’s the festival of a nation united in common causes.. It sure took a long time for some of us to become more in common than others.. We have been through pain and tribulation as a country.
And we will again.
The ending of the WONDER YEARS from 1993 (yes, that long ago) was the same mixture of nostalgia and pain that Americans so often feel as they glare at the bombs bursting in air above their towns every year.. Kevin Arnold didn’t marry Winnie. And his dad had a heart attack. And things didn’t really go the way people thought they would .. or could.
Possibilities often dashed but somehow it all works it.
America has the same feeling sometimes.. The same coupling of pain and laughter, sorry and joy. All at once as well…
And that is just life. American life. Fourth of July 2016.
This being reported by a CBS news dispatch this morning:
SANTA ROSA – A man watching a horror movie was stabbed repeatedly at a Santa Rosa movie theater Wednesday afternoon, CBS San Francisco reports.
Santa Rosa police said the man was watching the movie when someone came up behind him and stabbed him. The victim, a 21-year-old man, remains in critical condition.
Police said the attack appears to be random and unprovoked.
The Santa Rosa Press Democrat newspaper reported that the man was watching the movie “The Shallows” when he was attacked.
Santa Rosa police responded to a stabbing at about 4 p.m. inside the Roxy Theater, located at 85 Santa Rosa Ave.
Police said the suspect, identified as a 23-year-old man, stabbed the victim several times and then ran out of the theater toward the Prince Memorial Greenway.
Some witnesses called 911 while other witnesses assisted the victim until emergency crews arrived. The victim was taken to a hospital with multiple life-threatening stab wounds, police said.
Santa Rosa police said witnesses were able to provide officers with a physical description of the suspect and the direction that he fled. officers located the suspect at Prince Memorial Greenway and A Street. He was taken into into custody but his identity has not yet been released.
Flash-forward to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and another uptick in extreme horror films, led by two franchises, “Saw” and “Hostel,” that reflected a darkening mood. In the wake of the 2003 Abu Ghraib scandal, mainstream entertainment passed on dealing with the morals and efficacy of torture, aside from the ticking-time-bomb fantasies of “24.” But the “Saw” series, beginning in 2004, steered right into the curve. Over seven straight Halloween weekends, young audiences turned up in large numbers to watch like-aged victims wriggle under elaborate torture devices. And as post-9/11 goodwill eroded into hostility toward U.S. foreign policy overseas, 2005’s “Hostel” imagined the grimmest possible fate for American backpackers in Europe.
All that said, the newest PURGE movie still looks ridiculous.
Gunmen seized a bakery in Dhaka overnight, killing 20 hostages and two officers in a standoff that ended Saturday morning, the Bangladeshi military said.
All the hostages killed were foreigners, the military said.
The attackers used guns, explosive devices and “a lot of sharp domestic weapons,” said Brig. Gen. Naeem Ashfaq Chowdhury of the Bangladesh army. The hostages’ bodies were found after the standoff ended more than 10 hours later.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said 13 hostages were rescued"We were able to save 13 people, we weren’t able to save a few,“ Hasina said at a news conference. Six terrorists were killed and one was captured alive, she said.One Japanese national and two Sri Lankans were among the hostages rescued, officials from both nations said.The rescued Japanese national was having dinner with seven other colleagues from Japan, who are missing, said Koichii Hagiuda, the deputy chief Cabinet secretary.
There is this notion around the world as of late: WE lack civility..
We are told by countless social observers that the death of civility has come and gone.. that we are worse off now because of social media and the internet than ever before .. that our rudeness has been peaking and not stopping.
But is any of that true?
Quite honestly, it would appear that the world is less civil than ever before. The headlines of fishwrappers prove that to us daily, right? The talking heads on the soon to be extinct TEE VEE set bloviate until their red-faced sweaty necks can’t take anymore .. And online? Oh online. Where comment threads on news articles feature insults and anonymous hateful tirades from one person to the next.. Basements across America!! Alive with keyboard bullies hiding behind screens.
So it would then appear that civility, is dead, right? Not so fast, muchacho..
There may be a number of factors at play … The first, and foremost point: The NET is an open forum of things that already existed in real life. It is a continuation of what people act like, just in a net version. Before online criminals were found and prosecuted (easier with the NET now don’t forget) there was still crime. Cyber crime has made identity theft and human trafficking simplier – but it has also given officials a better avenue to catch it. Yes, I know, there is a dark net… Whole other story.
I would argue that civility was never alive.
I would venture to say that if we were truly civil people throughout history, very civil things would have happened. Women were oppressed. Large portions of society were enslaved.. and even up until the latter half of the 20th century, people who were free from bondage were still being hung and tortured in towns across America. Civil for some .. very uncivil for others.
Sometimes civility is not needed. There are fans of Donald Trump who like his for a brashness that has not been seen in American politics in generations. Some equate him to Teddy Roosevelt. Others may say he is Eugene McCarthy with worse hair. Either way, his lack of civility caught on enough to be recognized and now, in fact, his insults have become sport. His Twitter is followed by millions of people anxiously awaiting his next insult and who he will choose to hear his wrath. And for all of those who say they take the high road, if THEIR candidate fought back against Trump in typical Trump style, they would be applauded for taking the stand. After all, how do you deal with someone who lacks civility? Join them.
Around the time of then Al Qaida beheadings being uplaoded and broadcast to the world online (long before ISIS), we were hit with relentless footage. The snooze media didn’t show the most revulting aspects. For that, you were able to just trek online. The information age suddenly turned gruesome and disgusting… footage of various hostages deaths made its way around the net in 2004 and beyond. Nick Berg was the first and most famous, but there were certainly many more after him. Along with that, the news that the American government approved what some term torture made its way to front pages… And then the perverbial excrement hit the fan when we found out soldiers were systmatically invovled with sexual and mental torture of Guantameno detainees. Around the same time, the horror movie SAW franchise became popular and other torture porn flicks made their way onto the cinema.. the first being HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES by Rob Zombie .. The 2000s have featured a cultural array of uncivil media.. Obviously, we would be told, a sign that we are uncivil.
Hold on a minute…
Those alive in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, may recall a video set that made its way around the world in the underground called FACES OF DEATH. The most famous scene probably is one where a group of wealthy elites slowly torture a monkey and eat its brain. But included with the series were other horrid and tragic featurettes that should go unspoken about on this forum. The 1960s and 70s also featured a series of films with depravity. Torture was in then. The TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE may have been mostly bloodless, but the idea of torture and uncivil behavior was included.
Congress can’t get along now. But in the past would have fist fights.
There have even been presidents—presidents who are currently on legal tender!!—that killed others in duals. There have been labor unions that used violence to carve a better path to the future.. some of them, like the Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania, were hung without due justice and killed without true reason.
If you want to talk uncivil, imagine a world where a “Civil” (really an oxymoron) War is taking place and brother is murdering brother in battlefields across the Eastern seaboard of the United States…
Imagine a system of torture devised to convince you to be a Christian. Or even the most Christian person of all, Jesus himself, being tortured by Roman guards and forced to die on a cross. Even if you don’t buy into Jesus, you can at least acknowledge that the very essence of punishment for years has been horribly uncivil.
Yes, I know the argument. The internet makes it easy to be anonymous. That is true. 4Chan and others have perfected the rapid speed of the net to get their social ways. But more and more people online are using their real names on sign ups for forums. Even Facebook commenting leaves it all ‘out there.’
Oh selfies, too.. that makes us uncivil, right?
Look back in history… people loved when cameras were invented and, while it may have taken 18 minutes to take a photo (no wonder people looked so miserable) people still clearly enjoyed having their photos taken for posterity. Every new generation growing up will judge their parents for the sins they commit. But then they’ll judge the new generation that comes after them just as much as they judged their elders. Judging .. judging… judging.. No solutions are rendered, but instead criticisms are hurled. Nothing changes.
Nothing is civil. And quite frankly. Nothing ever was.
