"What Matters To Me"

Which could accurately describe this entire enterprise, though, fearing a resounding “Who cares?” I chose the safer “Just Thinking” instead. 

“Protecting the Brand”, you know.  (Which will arise again, not a surprise on our trademark “Protect The Brand” culture.  The “brand” is the “baby.”  Insulated at all costs.  

I am hoping to be brief, an intention I feel rapidly slipping away.  Still, with but one point in mind, I shall try to adhere to its boundarying parameters.    

Wish me luck.  Here goes.

A hideous “tweet.”

And my first thought is not “I ‘get’ – and rigorously support – “Free Speech’, but that egregiously ‘crosses the line’.”  (For no discernible explanatory purpose.)

My first thought is not “Ouch!” on behalf of the blind-sided “target.” Although I immediately empathize. (See:  The original lyric in Cabaret’s“If you could See Her Through My Eyes”, a sordid production number involving an “stand-in” Aryan and a {fake} gorilla that startlingly ends with, “… She doesn’t look Jewish at all.”)

My first thought is not for the hundreds of innocent Rosanne employees, thrown into “Collateral Damage” unemployment.

My first thought is not“What this country coming to?” with its inevitably accompanying “What do you expect with a president who’s the championing “Poster Boy” for “Unfiltered Putridity”?

And my first thought – though it’s close – is notthe vociferous backlash from those perceiving the reaction to the “tweet” as further corroborative evidence of the polarizing “Them versus us.”

My instinctive first thought, instead – rightly or wrongly –

Is about fairness.

That is simply the way I roll.  (Acknowledging others may roll differently.)

Traditionally, my “List of Evaluative Concerns” slots the issue of “Fairness” consistently at the top, a proclivity I attribute to the “Deprived Second Child – of two – Syndrome”, where the faintest whiff of “patrilineal favoritism” sparks an immediate, whining,

“No fair!”

(So much for “unlicensed psychologizing.”)

Demonstrable Track Record:

When O.J. Simpson went home, I wailed incredulously at my television,

“No fair!”

When a Supreme Court with a 5-4 conservative majority famously favoring “States Rights” overruled the right of the State of Florida to recount its ballots – 5-4 – handing the office of president to a conservative – I angrily anguished, 

“No fair!”    

When the police beat the crap out of Rodney King (and were exonerated), and more recently, lethally shot defenseless black youths in the back (with minimal consequences) – I helplessly bleated,

“No fair!”

That’s what I think about. I know there are other – legitimate – issues needing attention.  But that’swhat, for me, inevitably comes to the fore.

“No fair.”

Rosanne Barr transmits a vomitous “tweet.”  Disneyimmediately cancels Rosanne.  A “righteous gesture of outrage”?  Or a company, protecting its vulnerable brand”?  Youdecide.  (Considering recent precedents arguing the latter.  See:  The NFL, in the opposite direction.)

I did not want to write about this.  But I was unable to move forward until I did.  (That is apparently the way this works.)

What do I feel about what happened?

I feel a number of things. 

But – idiosyncratically – this, most of all.

A mentally messed up woman got hammered.

And, though serious sanctions were definitely called for,

The “knee jerk” axing of her TV show?

I don’t think that’s fair.