GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Smart Phones and Rude People

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I saw this article on Yahoo Monday about a TED talk Sergey Brin gave last week, where he discussed the ways that he finds his smart phone “emasculating.”  I don’t have a strong opinion on that topic, but it’s also partly because I don’t have a smart phone.  I’m not really a luddite as much as I am true to the Swiss, German and Scottish parts of my ancestry in my frugality and my reluctance to adopt the latest fads, especially when those fads come with a monthly fee I’d rather not have to pay.

I only have a rather primitive cell phone, and I rarely use it very often.   I remember back around 2000 watching the Oprah show one day when Oprah confessed she didn’t have a cell phone, and she couldn’t understand why people needed to be available that way at all times and in all places.  While I’m sure Oprah has relented and gotten not just a cell phone but a smart phone by now, I still remember her remark in resisting that particular technology.

But while I might not have a smart phone, most of the other folks I know or encounter have one.  And that brings me around to my topic of the moment.  I’m less worried about whether or not smart phones are “emasculating” than I am about their tendency to make people more self-absorbed, oblivious, and frankly rude.

I’m appalled at work when I see people checking their smartphones during meetings, but I see it all the time.  And then there is the matter of the folks who text (or play “Angry Birds”) while walking or crossing the street or, worse, while driving.

My particular gripe at the moment is something that I see more and more frequently when I fly these days, and that is people who flout the rule against using their cell phones during flight.  Maybe it is an unnecessary rule, but it is still a rule, and ostensibly a rule put in place for everyone’s safety.  Nevertheless, I’ve witnessed people within my line of sight who don’t turn off their phones when instructed, or who furtively turn them on in mid-flight to start texting or checking e-mails (and I’m not talking about a flight with wi-fi), or who hide them away only to have them ring during flight.   On one of my most recent flights, a phone rang and a guy took the call and started talking as we were going into the final descent before landing.   I’m not a frequent flyer, so if I’ve witnessed all of these things, I can’t be the only one.

Maybe I’m just being a grouch, but it seems to me that the advances in communications technology have desensitized many people (and not just the Alec Baldwins of the world) to the demands of common courtesy and common sense.

A World Away

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I see news of next year’s “fiscal cliff” is finally getting through from the mainstream media today. Well, financial concern is one of the reasons for my travel binge the past two weeks. Just in case.

Here are some photos from Day One in Sydney, Australia. It is Tuesday morning as I post this.

Cheers!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

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Traveling through Walt’s World, then the real World

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It’s Bruce checking in from Orlando, FL, where PatriotPartner (John) and I are celebrating a good friends birthday at Disney World.

Then on Saturday night, we head out for a more ambitious trip: Sydney, Australia next week!

On Oct 3., John and I are lucky enough to see Lady Antebellum perform at the Sydney Opera House!

All this to say that my blogging will be slow. And I’m actually trying to ignore the day-to-day political stuff until Oct 8! Wish me luck. LOL.

I will probably have some pics during the Sydney trip on my Twitter account. So follow me there for sure!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Paula Deen: Bringing GayPatriot Readers Together

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Before I drove cross country in 2010, I had never heard of Southern cooking diva Paula Deen, but I credit her for the harmony of our readers’ dinner in Atlanta that spring.  You see, when we gathered in that august town, I was concerned; one of our critics (with whom I have corresponded at least since 2006) would be joining us — along with two of our most outspoken conservative readers, one who, two years after the 2008 election, still sported a McCain-Palin sticker (with the Arizona Senator’s name removed) on his truck.

I had feared I might have to play peacemaker.  Well, I didn’t have to.  I don’t know how Paula Deen came up, but as soon as she did, all my Atlanta readers found something to talk about — how they delighted in this diva, enjoying her books, TV show and recipes.  They discussed which ones they had tried and home and celebrated her appreciation for butter.  Paula Deen, in short, bridged the political divide.

Aware of this woman’s capacity to foster harmony, my ears naturally perked up when my correspondent James Richardson alerted me this weekend to an article he wrote, taking to task “Northern” food critics who would bring this Southern diva down:

“Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later,” [New York-based foodie Anthony] Bourdain said Tuesday. He has also previously called Deen the “worst, most dangerous person to America” for her country cooking indulgence. Even 2011 James Beard winner Jose Andres said that Dean should “endorse a vegetable or fruit” instead of a diabetes drug.

But the Bronx cheer for apparent chef-turned-rebel terrorist Deen, a prototypical Southern mother with a lifetime’s recipes of irredeemably deep-fried dishes, is less a reflection of the culinary elitism that runs through Bourdain’s vice-ridden travelogues than the regionalist snobbery that fuels its appeal.

. . . .

From food to faith, the mythic Dixie–soulful and abundant, passionate and insubmissive–has always clashed with the rigidly cosmopolitan north, which keeps an ever watchful eye on we, her unlearned, drawling wards. [Read more…]

Did Washington Post ever look for outlandish/incorrect predictions and quotes from Barack Obama’s past?

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Apologies for the slow blogging.  Am spending time with some good Mormon friends in Utah.  And, no, they’re not trying to “cure” me.  They know I’m gay and have made me very welcome in their home, even allowing me to adopt their children as my niece as nephews.  Indeed, they have made me feel far more welcome than have many gay liberals upon learning I’m a conservative.

Anyway, as you can probably guess, I have much to say on the retirement of the unhappy Barney Frank.  The long and the short of it is that it is a very good thing for gay Americans.  We will no longer have this mean-spirited embarrassment as the most prominent gay politician in the country.  If we had a less biased media, reporters would note how frequently the Massachusetts Democrats has been wrong and journalists would ask him tough questions.  He has shown an obliviousness to the reality of the marketplace and the record of the Reagan era.  And has demonstrated a refusal to admit wrong and an arrogance about his critics.

He doesn’t seem to realize that this nation enjoyed an economic boom in the 1990s in no small measure to Senate Republicans’ success in filibustering the Clinton “stimulus” in 1993 and Bill Clinton’s compromises with such congressional Republicans as Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990s.

That said, I post this piece having just chanced upon this post on Drudge:

“For those unfamiliar,” writes Noel Sheppard in posting this,

Blake writes for the Post’s The Fix political blog, hence the moniker “Fix Aaron.”

What would one expect from a newspaper that only five months ago called for readers to sift through former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s email messages?

It therefore isn’t at all surprising they’d be looking for dirt on the current Republican presidential frontrunner.

Wonder if Mr. Blake or any of his Washington Post colleagues went looking for dirt on the Democratic presidential frontrunner in the 2008 campaign.

SOMEWHAT RELATED:  Wonder if anybody at Mr. Blake’s paper is tweeting for help in sifting through the recent White House Visitor Log Document Dump.