PUBLIC PERSONALITY FAIL DISAPPOINTS YOUR MOMMA

Displaying a public personality means taking a side. Otherwise, why bother?

If someone has something to say, by all means, get it out. Say your piece, then sit down.

But that’s not the way it works. Too often they skip the part about sitting down.

The correct way to present a public personality goes like this:

Speak, listen, discuss.

Use the manners your momma taught you. If you don’t, be prepared for questions about your momma. And no one wants questions about their momma.

It doesn’t go like this:

Speak, speak louder, start screaming, contort your face into a painful expression, and KEEP SCREAMING.

If this is your idea of conversation, momma ain’t happy.

Remember, we are all reflections of how we were raised, and momma didn’t raise whiny punks.

Creating a class of jackasses is not a life goal. Ordinarily a kid who runs his mouth like a Fox New public personality would get corrected at home, at school, or on the playground.

Little Tucker would have been dragged through the black berry brambles at Bangor Grade School, pushed off the bank at North Bend Junior High, and tormented for three years at North Bend High School.

Unless he was good at football. We needed better football players.

Children In Public History Lesson

In my day the biggest public communication between kids and parents were report cards.

A good report card meant no ripples; a bad report card meant a parent-teacher meeting and getting grounded.

No one wanted to wear the moron hat in my family. The one the academic counselor advised to find work in menial labor after high school ended up getting a Masters.

There’s nothing like setting the bar and proving smart guys wrong.

Some kids came from different backgrounds. One of my grandpas said anyone who wanted to go to school past the eighth grade was just afraid of work.

He was a logger who broke his back working in the woods. It’s dangerous work worthy of fear. His oldest son, a man I call Dad, was the first in his family to earn a Bachelors degree.

If he had listened to his father he never would have strayed from the logging camp. But he married a woman with other ideas, white collar ideas, not blue.

She wanted her man in a respectable profession that required a college degree, and she molded one to perfection.

Their kids benefited. Thanks, Ma.

Improving A Public Personality

I saw a public speaking failure during my time in the Army.

A young trainee decided he’d had enough of the abuse Drill Sergeants are experts at dispensing.

We were all on a long march up and down the firebreaks in Ford Ord, California.

The kid was tired and thirsty and didn’t want to continue. Everyone else felt the same way, but no one spoke up.

This trainee refused to get up when the senior drill said break time was over and fall in. Everyone took their place, but him.

In a loud public speaking voice, the trainee informed the drill that he had rights and knew people and didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to do.

It was an impressive display.

More impressive was the way the drill yanked him to his feet, yelled in his face, and slapped him a few times to drive the point home.

That’s when the idea of a New Army looked a lot like the old Army. It was a highlight of the march and the kid fell in, kept his mouth shut, and worked it out like a good soldier.

No one expects some grizzled Drill Sergeant to snatch up people and slap them around for the lack of manners and decency in their public personality, but once you’ve seen it in action, it’s easy to imagine the results.

What would the bloated faces in the Fox sphere look like after a few whacks? What would a hard hand on a soft face sound like?

While I don’t approve of this sort of corrective measures for adults, I am curious to know who would break and who wouldn’t. Which of the pinch faced purveyors of tainted fact would need a crying room if they received a harsh rebuke?

Who among this classless cabal would crack first? Any bets?