Day: April 2, 2019

“Tactile Uncle Joe”

Fandango40 Comments

0949E4E9-3497-44EC-A97C-861B2AD14D31Former Vice President Joe Biden is considering throwing his hat into the already crowded ring of Democratic hopefuls to run against the Orange Moron in 2020. But tactile Joe is running into trouble.

Two women have come forward in the past few days claiming inappropriate behavior on the part of Uncle Joe. One woman said that he came up behind her at a political rally, put his hands on her shoulders, smelled her hair, and gave her a “slow kiss” on the back of her head. Another woman said that he rubbed noses with her during a 2009 political fundraiser.

“It wasn’t sexual, but he did grab me by the head,” the second woman said. “He put his hand around my neck and pulled me in to rub noses with me.”

Biden has a reputation as a “touchy-feely” guy, and admits that he is a “tactile” person. But it seems to me that his behavior is more of an idiosyncrasy than anything sexual.

Biden is not my first choice to be the Democratic nominee, but I find it a bit peculiar that Democrats are so up-in-arms about these allegations. What is the upside to making a such big deal out of these likely innocent acts? I’m not saying that these situations were, in these #MeToo days, appropriate, but I do believe, with absolute certainty, that it’s a stretch to think he was being sexually abusive to these women.

And come on, folks. For Donald Trump, sexually inappropriate behavior is a common occurrence. Donald Trump was caught on video tape bragging that, as a “star,” he could grab women by their vaginas (i.e., sexual assault). Donald Trump has been accused by upwards of 20 women of being sexually inappropriate with them. Donald Trump paid hush money to a former Playboy bunny and to an adult film actress that he had extramarital affairs with in order to prevent those affairs from becoming public during his campaign.

Republicans continue to embrace their totally immoral, sexually abusive President, while Democrats are wringing their hands because Joe Biden sniffed one woman’s hair and had an Eskimo kiss with another. Compared with Trump, Uncle Joe is a choirboy.

There’s no question that people should respect women who have come forward about unwanted physical contact. They deserve to be heard and believed about how they were made to feel. There’s also no doubt that Joe Biden needs to stop sniffing women’s hair and rubbing their noses. And Biden must also learn to be a less “tactile” politician.

At the same time, it’s critical to understand that not every offense is of equal severity. And it’s also important to recognize when the alleged perpetrators are acting with malevolence (e.g., Donald Trump) or are just clueless.

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Written for Teresa’s Opposites Attract prompt using the words “peculiar” and “common.” Also for theses daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (idiosyncrasy), Word of the Day Challenge (upside), Your Daily Word Prompt (absolute), and Ragtag Daily Prompt (stretch).

B is for Blogger

Fandango62 Comments

791CD1B9-5742-4B19-BCBF-39FD5922DB40I often wonder what I am. Am I a blogger who writes or am I a writer who blogs?

I read an interesting post last week from fellow blogger Teresa, aka The Haunted Wordsmith. In that post, Teresa, who blogs on both WordPress and Medium, wrote:

“Anyone who puts two words together with a purpose is a writer. A writer who takes those words and publishes them online on a blog is a blogger.”

I put words together with a purpose, but I am not sure I would call myself a writer. I think of a writer as someone who puts words together with the purpose — or at least the hope — of being able to make a living through the publication of their words in books that are sold to the public. The goal of a writer is to get something he or she wrote to appear on the New York Times bestseller list and to be generously compensated for having done so.

Writers compose their words to be read in book form, they tend to focus on the art of the sentence. They often write in long, complex, highly descriptive sentences strung together into long, complex, highly descriptive paragraphs, the objectives of which are to draw the reader into their long-form compositions for hours on end.

Bloggers, on the other hand, typically use shorter sentences and even shorter paragraphs in order to appeal to the shorter attentions spans of online readers. Their objective is to keep their readers engaged for five to maybe eight minutes.

And how many bloggers do you know who earn enough money from their blogs to make a living? I don’t even try. Thus, I fall squarely in the blogger category.

But then again, in order to be a blogger, you must write. You must, as Teresa said, put words together for a purpose, that purpose being to write posts that generate immediate responses from, and interactions with, other bloggers.

Bottom line, bloggers write and some bloggers may even get books published (or get their stories or poems published in anthologies). Published writers write and may or may not blog.

Does it really matter, at the end of the day, whether I call myself a blogger or a writer? Probably not. So, um, never mind.

More important, what are you? Do you consider yourself to be a blogger who writes or a writer who blogs?

Previous A to Z Challenge 2019 posts:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Twittering Tales — Regrets

Fandango20 Comments

73C1AA66-DF05-46B7-A6FA-CF53020FD8D7I’ve lived a long life, a good life, a happy life, and as I look back on the life I lived, I have few regrets.

No regrets about the deeds that I’ve done or the things that I’ve said.

But I do have regrets about the things I never got around to saying to you.

And now it’s too late.

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Written for this week’s Twittering Tales prompt from Kat Myrman. Photo credit: Marc Schäfer at Unsplash.com.

FOWC with Fandango — Idiosyncrasy

Fandango29 Comments

FOWCWelcome to April 2, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “idiosyncrasy.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.