Once visual perception is lost other senses become more sensitive to compensate, touch, smell, hearing, all send messages to the brain to process. What if visual perception is over crowded with information, some of it of no value, the brain has in a split second decide what to process and what to consider for immediate use or store for future reference.

Last night I was watching one of the cable news outlets in prep for the upcoming primary elections, a giant event clock was counting down to the opening of the election polling places’, a news crawl, the current time, the network logo, an anchor with guests talking, all at the same time. The only way for me to grab any significance of any of the above was to close my eyes and process the verbal, blocking out all the visuals. When I choose a news network it’s not what information is available but what can I take away as time well spent. The network heads just don’t seem to know about ‘over-crowding’ the senses, otherwise they would not practice bombarding the brain with visuals, if transmitting pure information is the ‘coin of the realm’, then one would think a clean screen of only what is necessary in reporting is necessary to be displayed…What do you think?

 

When I was drafted into the U.S. Army as a recruit I was required to wear a baseball cap, if ever I get out of this organization alive I will never wear one again, I have never seen anyone that looked good in one.

Loretta Young was the star of an anthology television series, called The Loretta Young Show that ran Sunday nights from 1953 to 1964 on NBC. As the program host she would appear as herself in current fashions at the start of each program, in reruns she insisted that the openings be deleted, since the fashions would date the program, they did, she was right and looked silly five to ten years later.

Anyone who appears today on television as themselves will fall prey to and be inviting ridiculousness years later in reruns, all except those that that have the fortitude to appear as they really are aging in a normal progression as real people do. People like Wayne Newton and Steve Wynn, not so much, I take that back, not at all.

Every Sunday morning and on during the week, on every cable news outlet, female news contributors and some dye haired males in toupees will be providing fodder to a laugh track as if in a comedy skit. To support my argument, pull out the family photo album and laugh till it hurts…

 

The public spat, no make that feud, between the newly blond Trump and the perpetually blond Kelly, reminds me of the Jack Benny v. Fred Allen radio feud of the late 1930s, that went on for a decade, is of no value, not in the public interest other than to those who will be able garner millions in its continuum and as entertainment. A so called secret meeting has already taken up a lot media attention, think of the advertising dollars paid for an actual meeting for the networks holding such a meeting and even the ones reporting it. You can always count on big ratings when a creditable news person proclaims that a modern folklore character like, ‘Santa is just white’. How will this all play out? I hope not with her being just another dumb blond sitting in the middle of two men on morning television. Now if we all can just ‘calm down’ just a little as the big dollars are offered then refused then offered again…as Maddow would say, ‘Watch this space’…

‘God is my witness’, ‘I’ll never be hungry again!’ So proclaimed Scarlet O’Hara a character in the 1939 film ‘Gone with the Wind’. And having eaten a good meal had her fill would then push herself away from the table. Not so for some the highest paid chief business executives. After earning five to ten million dollars a year how much more could one want to earn. How many houses can one live in, how many cars can one drive? How much money left to one’s offspring before that wealth begins to spoil them for life? Who ever heard of an executive pushing away from the earning table. After all, after the first five million it is all about the bragging rights among peers. ‘I am going to resign my post because I am earning just too much money, is never or will ever be heard. ‘Greed is good’, it’s what’s oils the wheel of success and business, without it; what are we working for? Does wealth have any drawbacks? Yes. Prejudicial rejections of the poor or anyone of less quality of worth, the rich only want to deal with the rich, it’s a cultural adaptation, like dressing for dinner in the proper dinner jacket that only their breeding would understand. Which is why I would never understand how in the movie Titanic a character was able to go from a homeless poor person in third class to mix with first class passengers where even his speech would have given him away as not one of the rich upper class. In a movie fantasy any and everything is possible, everyone is handsome and beautiful and blemish free much like the fruits and vegetables at the supermarket after the bruised are sold to the poor, the rich get the best if they can afford it, it’s the way of the world…Throughout recorded history there has always been a kind equilibrium a kind balance of the have and have nots, though always just off-kiter, however, not as bed as it is these days that is being upset by too many haves and too few have nots, which is ripe for some kind of revolution…’just you wait Henry Higgins’…

 

Anyone who frequently use public transportation to travel around the greater New York City have been seen with a card carrying type necklace around their neck, mostly the elderly or anyone really, that contain their Metropolitan Transit fare card for easy access. Anyone of mixed estrogen or testosterone expecting to do any traveling in certain southern states should get one. Why? To be used to contain one’s birth certificate, again for easy access. It may be possible for a John Doe or Jane Doe to be challenged trying to enter a public restroom. To clarify, a male looking person trying to enter a ‘ladies only’ restroom, or a female looking person trying to enter a ‘male only’ restroom, they are not as they appear but are transgender. What is clearing needed is a gender neutral restroom in addition to the what we have now, or to just change our way of thinking about all of us that have to use the necessary when necessary…

 

 

A republican presidential candidate said that the United States North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies should spend more for their own protection and perhaps be allowed to develop their own arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The Limited Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963 to end above ground testing, was developed both to slow the arms race, curtail the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide.

Let us take ten houses without a fire arm present, the chance of an intended or accidental shooting would be zero, add on fire arm to one of those houses, the chance of a shooting is increased by ten percent.

Ten percent chance of a nuclear weapon being fired intentionally or accidental could mean the end of the earth at least as we have come to know it, let us not take that chance…

 

In my apartment building there are two families that are top heavy with females, by their appearance, it is assumed they watch a lot of television. One family on the ground floor, would not think of leaving the building without a straight haired piece on their head, they have an image of beauty and worth that begins with television, are observers of people like Joy-Ann Reid, Gwen Ifill, Gayle King and Checkey Beckford.

Down the hall, another family’s worth also begin with what is on their heads too, observers of once natural, but now fake blonds like, Liz Peek, Gerri Willis, Susan Haskins and Mary Alice Williams.

It is easy to assume that some are allowed to practice broadcast journalism or other forms of television because of what’s on their heads instead of what’s in their heads, which is detrimental to the image of future generations of females in broadcast journalism and life in general. I know it’s a cultural entity when high school sweet hearts, the male grays and the female does not. I saw a book cover of a mother and son, the son had more gray hair then his mother. A panel discussion of five each male and female, one or two of the males may have a hair issue, none of the females. I can’t wait for a pioneering female with a thinning hair line to appear on a televised talk show as her true self and not some wigged imposter…and if she did little girls everywhere will not have to try to appear in an impossible, for her, body image, and just be who they are without straight blond hair…

A German comic, an American presidential candidate, and actor and a big city mayor; what do they all have in common?

There is a phrase that every satirist knows all too well, ‘Too soon,’? Meaning an incident or situation is not ready for banter, it has to be baked till done or almost burned to a crisp, or left on the vine until fully ripe. There are some subjects that require distance others in who is doing the telling. Ethnicity has its own special rules, no matter how amusing, they can only be told by its card carrying members, any others is a deliberate affront and a no-no without an embargo for so many years if any. Immediately following the Lincoln assassination in the southern United States there were no embargo on jokes where Lincoln was considered a villain, at the same time, a saint in the north. Satire is an equal opportunity offender, one either celebrate the satire or cures it, to the satirist either way the point has been made, deal with it, or forever hold your tongue…

 

Waterboarding, is it torture? Let’s put that aside for now. Who is a candidate for this procedure? Any and everyone, including you and me. What is required? Be called an ‘Islamic Terrorist’ or worse. It is assumed this is done pretrial, once so labeled, that’s it. What defense can you offer? Not to worry, done will be accepted. Waterboarding is open and available without the benefit of any legal operating practice and is totally without and is unscrupulous. Its legality can still be called into question after a trial and one is found guilty, but by then its reasoned any information may be found to have become stale and useless, as if it had any value when it was fresh, but gotten under torture who knows. ‘I did it’, the prisoner screamed as his fingernails are pulled out one by one…

 

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, some were amazed how much gray hair was displayed after he no longer had access to personal hair products after his removal from power in Iraq. All world leaders to a person color or blacken their hair as if some great power of confidence would be lacking if they appeared with natural occurring gray hair. It is seldom reported if ever that President Ronald Reagan dyed his hair, he was sixty-nine years old upon first taking office. And if one is in show business or the news business, is known for red, brown or blond hair and it starts to turn gray it is in their business interest not to let that happen in public. Does the quality of leadership or the news change by the appearance of the person delivering it? I think not, however, our initial reaction to anyone’s appearance good or bad may alter how we perceive everything they do or say. An unattractive swindler will never be successful no matter how big the payout, but a handsome or pretty face will sucker us in every time, we are irresistibly attracted by something, anything superficial. Which begs with wonderment as to why there is never a story in the news about the public figures, chiefly in broadcast news who are toupee wearing or blond hair dyeing fakes