I Love Mankind...

"It's people I can't stand."  Remember that one?

I was just trying to compose an email without being overly-distracted by ads popping up alongside.  There was an old photo of Andy Griffith and a young woman, with the caption, "Andy Griffith ruined more careers than..."

I don't want to know whether or not Andy of Mayberry was a creep.  I don't want my stomach to turn if I accidentally catch Andy and Opie whistling down the lane while switching channels.  He's dead, isn't he?

I feel the same about Ken Burns' new documentary, Ernest Hemingway.  I happen to enjoy KB's films and fully intended to watch his latest installment; until I watched an interview with Lynn Novick.  It told me enough to know I don't want to know if, contrary to Ernest's uber-macho persona, he enjoyed playing role-reversal with his partners, how salacious can they make that sound?  Would The Snows of Kilimanjaro remain the same for me, or even The Old Man and the Sea?  I'm not taking that chance.

I couldn't help wondering if such emphasis would be placed on that aspect of his life if gender identification weren't such a thing nowadays.  Would they focus on a Mommy issue?  Bed-wetting?  No, that was covered decades ago by Little Jo Cartwright himself, for those too young to remember.  To me, if Ernest chose to incorporate particulars of his life in his novels it should be left at that.  Do you think he would be pleased at what I will only guess is revealed in the docu-drama?  Maybe I'm wrong there.

I'm sorry I accidentally learned that Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copeland had a thing.  Now I can't keep that irrelevant point out of my head whenever I hear West Side Story or Appalachian Spring.  It's none of my business and doesn't affect my life; at least it DIDN'T until it became known to me.  Thanks, Public Radio, for spoiling my musical enjoyment for the sake of DISCLOSURE.

I'm one to talk: I bare most everything to the world but it's my choice and I don't have anyone coming after me to embarrass. And as long as I'm making a whatever of myself this morning I'd just like to add this:

It's not any number of Gun Issues, or Republicans, or Democrats, that are causing the continuation of senseless violence...it's giving the gunman notoriety, duh.  As soon as our 'masks came off' and we had our first mass shooting I immediately thought, "Here we go.  How long until someone tries to top this?"

And if you recall, it wasn't long.  This isn't a novel approach; other countries refuse to give further attention to madness by publicizing the name of the shooter and offering updates ad nauseum about the whys and how manys.  At least they should give this a try, since negotiating the problem away in Congress certainly isn't working, and there's no way we can get rid of all the weapons out there.

What do we have to lose?