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Curse of Old Men: More Creepy than Funny

Unlike women, as men age, there’s a tendency to stigmatize our awful attempts at humor by branding us “creepy” or “perverted” or “just gross.”  Plant an unfunny line on a 20-year-old guy and a teenaged woman might giggle, while the same line said by a guy over 60, to the same young teen, begets the world breaking apart as the whole tone and timbre of the conversation changes to a perceived perversion.

Why is that?

Is there always some sort of unspoken sexual underpinning to every male-to-female interaction that cannot be denied or generationally negotiated?  Why doesn’t the curse cut the opposite way against older women who are labeled creepy and perverted in the same condition?

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LinkedIn and the Promise of Minority Equality in the Age of Internet Access

Yesterday, I posted an image Janna took over the weekend to my social media circles, and I was surprised to read this morning how concerned some were over what I thought was a joyous image of young Black females in the urban core being involved in a connected electronic Age.  The action was happening on LinkedIn, and here is that discussion — I don’t know if you can read it by default, or if you have to be linked to me first or not — and here is the image that started it all:

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Why We Must Require a Return to the Moral Absolute

We live in a risky world where few things seem to matter.  A handshake is no longer enough of a guarantee of friendship or a promise for a business deal.  A country’s reputation in the world doesn’t matter if individual selfish interests are more important than a right example and proper behavior.

Where once we wanted to live the American Dream and to own the best and to be the brightest — we have now been beaten down by the ridicule of those elected to serve us, and by punishing economic times that sap our passions — we are now fine with just getting by, living paycheck to paycheck, and buying things are just “good enough” to get us by into the next reckoning moment of despair.

This steep decline in expectation and excellence is never grand or proper when it becomes the defining mantra of a country and its people.  A return to excellence and moral leadership takes money, empathy, dedication, and education.

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DOMA Goes Down in Defeat

Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority:

DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty. It imposes a disability on the class by refusing to acknowledge a status the State finds to be dignified and proper.

DOMA instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others.

The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.

By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

This opinion and its holding are confined to those lawful marriages.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is affirmed.

It is so ordered.

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Can Cheaters Defend Marriage?

I recently read a tremendous account of a man who took his son, a big fan of the honorable Mahatma Gandhi, to perhaps receive some advice on how to get his son to quit his addiction to sweets. Gandhi asked the man to come back with his son two weeks later. The man said that it would be cost prohibitive and wondered why Gandhi could not help him at that time. Gandhi explained that he would just have to come back two weeks later.

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Are Men Better at Returning Business Calls than Women?

We have written a lot about gender issues in the past, and today I’m going to set a pendulum in motion that may seem swingingly odd, but I am curious to get your feedback on the momentum of the matter.

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Gay Equity

Are Gays finally on their way to not just being equal in America, but to also having some equity in a society that has generally forsaken them?

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Decline of the American Woman

Is the American woman an endangered species?  Is she losing the good fight for equality in the workplace, on television and in our political hearts?

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Equality and Un-Equality: The Human in Society

by Mary Ann Greco

“All men are created equal” is a fundamental principle in our Government’s constitution. This principle recognizes the natural order of the human condition, “all men are created un-equal”. “Equalization” of the human in society is a responsibility of those who govern. (Equalization is the process of balancing. Here it is used in reference to the human in society). It is a goal, an aim, a never-ending road, but an “ideal” we strive for in order to establish fair practice in societies. This begins from the smallest social group, the family, through to nations.

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Upside Down & Inside Out

by Nancy McDaniel

I’m at that age, “A Woman of a Certain Age” (Isn’t that what The French call middle age? Or is it semi-old age? I think we need a new term for us Boomers. Fifty-two can’t be middle age because that would mean I would live until 104. This is not likely, especially with the not-so-great genes I inherited. Besides, although I like Willard Scott quite a bit– even better when he was Ronald McDonald many years ago — I don’t like him well enough to live past 100 just to get a Smucker’s birthday salute. So if 52 is not middle age, then what is it? Certainly not golden age – what a dreadful term. Centrum calls it silver; they ask “isn’t it great to be silver?” I’d rather be platinum, I think. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s “going platinum.” Kind of like selling a lot of records. But not actually selling them, really just being old enough to have bought a lot of them — 45s and even 78s mostly)

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