Stand Your Ground (But don't pee on the electric fence!)

I used to watch the Jerry Springer Show. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the same thing Maggie thought and voiced. She wondered how I could watch something that not only had no socially redeeming value but which clearly illustrated the worst in human behaviour.

And that is precisely why I used to watch it.

It was like watching a car accident. You know you shouldn't but you can't pull your eyes away. The behaviour is so unbelievable. I used to tell Maggie that the next time she wondered how our countries got into the various messes we were in, she should remember the Jerry Springer Show. I told her I watched it to remind myself that the people on that show could not only breed, they could vote and that explained a lot about what is happening to our societies.

It would be unfair to blame it all on Jerry Springer or his show though. He seems like a reasonably nice, if sometimes somewhat bewildered, sort of guy and his program isn’t the only one that provides a forum for the intellectually and morally bankrupt to celebrate their moment in the sun.

There are lots of opportunities on television, in government, the broader mainstream media and certainly on social media for those who may prove Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is a crock.

Consider this fellow in North Carolina; no doubt a proud American who believes in the Constitution, God and the Bill of Rights. 

Clearly he believes sufficiently in the right of free speech when it comes to his right to express his opinion, he’s just not quite as fanatical about defending that right for others if they express an idea with which he disagrees. He reminds me of the precious dears in the Occupy Movement who talk endlessly about democracy and their rights while trampling all over the rights of those they consider the enemy.

That, of course, is the problem with freedom of speech; at some point you’re going to hear something from someone that you just don’t like. It might be an opposing idea, a hateful message or just plain stupid but they have the right to voice that stupidity just as the rest of us have the right not to listen.

There is a significant difference between choosing to tune out a message you don’t like and shouting it down or, as in this case, standing your ground and treating it like a home invasion.

People express their opinions quite freely and so they should. It is unfortunate that more people don’t bother to actually inform themselves before forming and then expressing that opinion but that’s life in a free society. It’s also life in a free society where some are just so far out there, even being fully informed isn’t going to save them.

  

This may actually be the first time somebody used urination as a tool to help get them elected to public office. Hopefully it won’t be the start of a trend. I would hate to contemplate the nature of those political ads once the big ad companies take a run at creating them. Political advertising is crass enough without bringing bodily functions into the mix.

But it does serve to remind us of how we end up with the extremists, the religious fanatics who protest the funerals of the military, who preach that God hates this group or that and activists who believe that the best way to combat corruption on Wall Street is through vandalism and self-indulgent behaviour.

It reminds us of how we can end up with school officials who ban words like 'dancing', 'dinosour' and 'Halloween" or a government like Egypt which just passed a new law permitting husbands to have sex with their spouse up to six hours after she has died. Now there's a law the world was awaiting breathlessly. It would seem that morgues in Egypt may soon become more like honeymoon hotels than anything else.

It’s also reminds us that it is where the folks who appear on Jerry Springer come from and fortunately for him, it appears that he won’t have to worry about running out of new guests for the foreseeable future. 

I may have been wrong about them voting but clearly they are breeding like hamsters in a cage taking a break from the big wheel. 

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