A little tired of………….The
Little Couple
Back in 2009 my wife happened to stumble upon a new reality series on The Learning Channel (that’s TLC in TV lingo).
The Little Couple.
The plot of the show follows and chronicles the lives of Jennifer Arnold and Bill Klein. A newly married couple (of over 3 years now I believe) in their mid 30’s who live in Houston, Texas.
Jennifer is a neonatal physician at Children’s Hospital at the Texas Medical Center while Bill (along with a business partner) owns a call center in New York State.
Both Bill and Jennifer suffer from a bone growth disease called Skeletal Dysplasia which leads to their dwarfism. Jen is 3 foot 2 inches tall and Bill is 4 feet tall.
The series began and continues to focus on the couples’ stature along with the trials and tribulations that they have (and continue) to overcome.
They are intelligent, humorous and interesting. Heck, I would love these 2 as my neighbors.
Here in lies the root of my article. I am not a PC person so I will be blunt.
In my opinion, the show is viewed by us (the audience) as a form of voyeurism if you will.
Are we watching the show because Jen is a doctor or Bill is a businessman (who works from a home office)? Perhaps a small number do but for the vast majority, NO.
Are we watching the show to see how these two live their lives day to day because they are little people? ABSOLUTELY.
Be honest.
If Jen and Bill were of average height and had the same professions, would we really even care? In high probability, NO.
After the first season of the show, the novelty for me quickly wore off. These two live an average life like we all do. There is nothing special to theirs. Yes, they are little; yes they face obstacles (as we all do day to day) with some being greater than others. They even just finished building a custom made 3,000+ square foot house.
In truth, I have seen nothing on the show that the two cannot do except for possibly conceiving a child.
Due to Jennifer’s size, doctors determined it would be risky for her to become pregnant so the couple wrestled with adoption or in vitro fertilization options.
They are currently in the second season of air time trying to conceive through a surrogate implanted with their “genetic materials” logging endless frequent flier miles back and forth (seemingly weekly) from Houston to a clinic in L.A.
Jen is a doctor at the largest medical center in the world and they cannot find an in vitro center in Houston? Only one on
the beach in Santa Monica, CA?
How convenient and it makes for some great seascape shots at sunset.
Half of the last season seemed to focus on this topic (the other half in completing the aforementioned house).
Why do we care?
I wish them all the success I would any couple wanting to have a child in any way they thought was appropriate (adoption, in vitro or the old fashioned way).
Now, the show has become just a “side show”. Is it not enough that we have been voyeurs in the daily lives of this couple for two and half years? But now it has extended to a surrogate couple?
Having children (and deciding how to have them) is a personal choice, not a worldwide event.
I have no idea how much longer the show will air or if they will have a child/children through in vitro or adoption. I really don’t care.
It seems to me that this couple who yearned to just be average and accepted for their stature have achieved this all TOO well. They have shown the nation that they can be just as tedious, boring and over the top as the rest of us.
In the end though like any reality show these days, it just continues to prove that we as a country will watch anything. We need that precious “water cooler” conversation piece. Now if I can only find my remote and change the channel. Finding Bigfoot is just starting on Animal Planet.
Public Health Warning: How to
Use Heroin Safely
Recently, I read an item in our local newspaper about a woman who overdosed on heroin at her home. Her brother broke down the door to her bedroom where she was found unconscious and not breathing. She was taken to the hospital. Right around that same time, my husband brought home a flyer he got at the Seattle courthouse from the King County Public Health Department which made my head spin.
warned of several heroin-related deaths in King County. No where on the notice did it say anything about getting off drugs, entering a rehab, referring individuals to N.A. meetings, or anything remotely addressing the problem of addiction.
Instead, it warned all users to treat all heroin as “suspect.” The Department didn’t know whether the deaths were caused by stronger heroin or a contaminant but said the deaths may have been caused by a “newer type of heroin” that’s hard, brittle and dark in color.
Here’s what the Department advised junkies to do in order to reduce the risk of an overdose and death:
Don’t use alone. When you fix alone or behind a locked door,
no one can help you if you overdose.
Test for strength and quality. When you use a new supply or
dealer, do a tester shot first. Inject slowly.
Tolerance. If you have not used in a while, your body can’t
handle the same amount it did before. Start with a smaller amount. Do a tester shot.
Mixing drugs. Mixing heroin or other opiates with downers
like benzos or alcohol can be deadly. Uppers and downers DO NOT cancel each other out!
Naloxone. Know how to use it! You can get naloxone at
the Robert Clewis Center (downtown needle exchange).
If I hadn’t seen the flyer, and my husband had told me about it, my immediate response would’ve been, “you’re kiddin’?” By the way, Naloxone is a drug used to counter the effects of an opiate (heroin or morphine) overdose.
Apparently, we also have a 911 Good Samaritan Law in Washington because the flyer advises that “under WA law, if you think someone is OVERDOSING and you SEEK MEDICAL HELP for
the victim, neither of you will be charged for POSSESSING OR
USING A SMALL AMOUNT OF DRUGS.” Now isn’t that comforting?
I don’t know about you, but I find this whole thing very troubling. No where on the notice does the Public Health Department provide any information regarding addiction but rather almost encourages continued use by providing information on how to safely use heroin.
I’ve always known that Seattle is a very permissive city. It ties the hands of police officers, it allows bums to remain on the street annoying city dwellers and visitors alike, it permits these same bums to defecate and urinate around public buildings and bus stops, and, I clearly remember years ago seeing tables on street corners with people handing out “clean” needles. (I‘m not sure if they still do that.)
I’ve always measured a city’s safety by how I feel walking alone on its streets. I’ve walked alone on the streets in cities in America and Europe and I can honestly say that I’ve never felt comfortable walking alone in Seattle.
I hate to be cynical but my professional experience with drug abusers tells me that any heroin user who wants to shoot up will shoot up and won’t care about “using alone” or “testing for strength or quality.”
This whole notice thing is legitimizing an illegal activity, kind of like telling an armed robber not to use bullets in his weapon.
Food Stamp Friday – Let’s
Party
Well, if you’re on food stamps and only want to pay a $5 cover charge, The Rose Club in Montgomery, Alabama will help you out. Yep, for those people with a food stamp card, you can get into the club on Friday nights for just $5.
The only good thing from this story was that attendees will not be able to buy booze with their food stamps. But that’s the only positive thing about this story. (But I also can’t forget that California welfare recipients used state-issued debit cards and withdrew more than $1.8 million in taxpayer cash on casino floors between October 2009 and May 2010. Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive order requiring welfare recipients to promise they would use the cash only to “meet the basic subsistence needs” of their families.) I can guarantee someone will figure out how to scam the system in Alabama and take advantage of this theme night at The Rose Club on the taxpayers’ dime.
I don’t ever like telling people what to do with their money because if they’ve earned it, they should be able to do whatever they please with it. But, seriously, if you’re on food stamps (thanks to the generosity of taxpayers), do you really need to be going out drinking on a Friday night? And, of course, we have to know that those people, with supposedly limited funds, will be spending a helluva lot more than the $5 cover during the night.
One comment I read said the following and I quote, “even po’ people need to get there drinkin’ on.”
As far as I’m concerned, that’s the last thing “po’ people” need. I’ve got a few suggestions to all those with so much time on their hands on a Friday night:
How about looking for a job? Picking up cans or litter to make your neighborhood a little nicer?
How about volunteering your time at a local shelter, food bank or church?
How about going to the local library and checking out a book for your own enjoyment or to read to your child? Or a DVD? How about taking that $5 cover charge and going to your nearest Dollar Store and buying a deck of cards and a couple of bottles of soda and inviting some friends over for some friendly card games? Or some card games like Go Fish or UNO and play them with your children?
How about going to your nearest Costco and spending that $5 on the biggest jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread you can buy so your child(ren) can have lunches for the next couple of weeks?
How about going to your local Goodwill store and buy a couple of board game and having a family game night? Or a jigsaw puzzle that everyone can work on for a couple of nights?
With daylight savings time in effect now, how about taking your children out for a long walk? Or to a nearby park?
I could go on and on and on but what’s the point….. I just don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.
— Thank You, God
Every now and then a war breaks out that is actually fun to watch. The kind of war where you’re hoping both sides lose. Thankfully, such a war has now erupted, and right here in the United States of Entertainment. On one side is a man who gives the term “nut job” a bad name. On the other, a man who gives the term “Al Gore” a bad name.
Yes, fans of chaos, this is the war pitting Keith Olbermann against Al Gore; a war between the biggest name on Current TV (which is like calling somebody the tallest midget in the room) and the Nobel Peace Prize winner who co-founded the left-wing network. If this were a movie it would be called “Dumb and Dumber, the Sequel.”
Olbermann worked for Current TV until a few weeks ago when he got fired for, among other things, not showing up to work. Hey, give the poor guy a break. He was making only $10 million a year. Not one to tolerate injustice, he sued Current TV seeking as much as $70 million for lost wages over the life of his contract and for an equity stake in the company that was part of the allure to get him to sign.
Just the other day, thing got interesting. Current TV fired back. It counter-sued Olbermann, claiming, as one news report put it, that, “he failed to perform his duties for the progressive television network and saying it does not owe him ‘a dime’ of the millions Olbermann claims he is owed.”
Before we move on, let’s remember that Gore (and Current TV’s co-founder Joel Hyatt) hired Olbermann knowing full well that he was a time bomb with horned rimmed glasses, that he was an escapee from a mental institution – that institution going under the name MSNBC. So Al Gore makes a chuckle-headed move like that and we’re supposed to trust him when he says global warming is going to destroy the planet? Forgive me if I’m
skeptical.
One of my favorite pastimes is watching progressives get ugly. I mean, they’re so compassionate most of the time, right? And that’s the best thing about the Olbermann-Gore War – the pure, rotten nastiness of it all.
After he got dumped, Olbermann fired a broadside against Gore and Hyatt saying in his lawsuit that there were so many technical problems at their network that it looked like “an unprofessional cable-access show.” Ouch!
Here’s what the network’s lawyers put in their counter-suit against Olbermann: “Current seeks a determination that it is no longer obligated to pay a dime to Mr. Olbermann who, having already been paid handsomely for showing up sporadically and utterly failing to keep his end of the bargain, now seeks to be paid tens of millions more for not working at all.”
Olbermann apparently got so sick of the Mickey Mouse operation at Current TV that he went AWOL. According to the lawsuit against him, he worked only 19 of 41 business days in January and February and refused to work on the network’s primary election coverage. Question: Why should he have to work on election coverage? After all, he was only in charge of NEWS at Current TV.
But Olbermann’s lawsuit says, “After being on the air for nearly eight months — long after all ‘growing pains’ should have ceased — Current still couldn’t manage to, literally, keep the lights on.”
Maybe, but the counter-suit says that Olbermann was a giant pain in the ass, that he rejected seven limousine companies, that he refused to cooperate in promotional discussions and that he took vacations with little notice. The suit also claims that Olbermann got especially annoyed one time and threw a glass mug on the set.
After reading the charges and the counter charges, I came to a conclusion: There is a God. And He likes me. He really, really likes me! Why else would he let this show go on?
One more thing: Each night, Keith Olbermann, the biggest star on Current TV, attracted 177,000 viewers.
I had more people at my Bar Mitzvah. Please God, don’t let it stop.
Trayvon Martin – The Cast of
Characters
On February 26th
, I was no where near the shooting of Trayvon Martin so I have no idea what happened. I don’t know Trayvon; I don’t know George Zimmerman. I don’t know if Trayvon did anything to provoke George and I have no idea what went on in George’s head or heart so I have nothing to say about the actual incident because the investigation is still ongoing and we don’t have all the facts.
But that hasn’t stopped a whole lot of other characters from injecting themselves into the national drama.
I’ll leave the media to the experts like Bernie Goldberg whose article Trayvon Martin and Media Hypocrisy tells us all we need to know about the media’s bias and its reporting of the story.
I can’t begin to imagine what Trayvon’s parents are going through, but I also can’t imagine how, amidst all the grieving, his mother had the time, energy and composure to
consult an attorney to file trademark applications for “I Am Trayvon” and “Justice for Trayvon.” Enough said.
President Obama was asked a question during one of his press
conferences about the case. Not having learned his lesson from the Gates situation at Cambridge, he went head first into the quagmire by saying that if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon. With that statement, Mr. Obama did more than just personalize the situation; he put a racial spin on it thereby excluding 86% of Americans. A person with true leadership skills would’ve had us collectively thinking of Trayvon as one of our own young people rather than reminding us that he was a black young man. I guess I have to give him some slack because he was speaking off the cuff without his teleprompter.
Enter poverty pimps, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, the race-baiting maggots who are genetically drawn to any opportunity for national attention. Al Sharpton was calling for the immediate arrest of George before the investigation was completed and only absented himself from the controversy to attend his own mother’s funeral. Jesse Jackson called Trayvon “murdered and martyred.” Jackson told the LA Times that “blacks are under attack,” adding that “targeting, arresting, convicting blacks and ultimately killing us is big business.” How irresponsible can two people be?
I’m not off base here particularly when you have the former NAACP leader C.L. Bryant accusing both Sharpton and Jackson of “exploiting” the Trayvon Martin tragedy to “racially divide this country.”
Who can forget those lovable New Black Panthers whose spokesman, Mikhail Muhammad, called for vigilante justice, saying “an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth” and offering a $10,000 reward for George’s “capture.” Not a word from President Obama or Eric Holder about this type of vigilantism but then again, it was Eric Holder who failed to follow
through with the prosecution of the 2008 New Black Panthers’ voter intimidation case.
Then there’s the moron, Spike Lee, who decided to tweet George’s address but got it wrong and tweeted the address of an elderly couple whose lives were disrupted by this idiot’s need for revenge. Since then, the couple has “settled” with Spike Lee (I hope they got plenty of bucks out of this bozo.) He’s since tweeted an apology. Maybe someone should tweet his address. He is a perfect example of why I cannot and will not separate the man/woman/actor/actress from their politics. As long as I know that one dime of my money will end up in his pocket, I will never see a Spike Lee movie. Period.
Before this is over, we’re going to see a whole new bunch of unsavory characters coming out of the woodwork. I’m sure there are plenty of publicity whores thinking right now how they can monetize the situation.
If there’s an arrest and George is put on trial, I’m sure Court TV will have a huge daily audience watching and picking apart every shred of evidence. I will go out on a limb and say that, just like there was no way OJ would ever be convicted, there will be no way that George will not be convicted.
