VULNERABLE MEN: “SOMETHING’S IN MY EYE”

Vulnerable men are all over the place. We don’t see them because they don’t want us to know.

Here’s a big “THANK YOU” for that. But sometimes it’s the other way around.

With the parade of sensitive men recently reduced, I don’t trust my own instincts.

William Hurt’s passing was sad news, another example that people get old and die.

Then the reports of his hidden life came out. Hidden from who?

He seemed like a vulnerable man, based on his acting, but he was one of these guys, too?

According to Matlin, Hurt, who had been dreading the possibility of Matlin winning the prestigious award, turned to her and asked, “What makes you think you deserve it?” He continued, “There are hundreds of actors who have worked for years for the recognition you just got handed to you. Think about that.”

Live life the way you like, but why not keep it inbounds with people you care about.

While not a spokesman for vulnerable men, I’d like my sensitive movie icons to stay iconic.

I’m not a better person for knowing Hurt’s private life shittiness.

What? Jerry Lewis Wasn’t Always Funny?

Stories come out after people die. I don’t know why, but maybe it helps with healing?

I was a Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin movie fan as a kid. I liked Bob Hope and Bing movies, too.

Jerry Lewis died in 2017.

I’m not a Jerry Lewis fan after hearing women in their nineties come forward.

Meanwhile, Holiday appeared in the New Jersey native’s 1961 movie “The Ladies Man.” She revealed that on the first day on set, Lewis told her to come into his dressing room, where he pressed a button that locked his door.

Button?” That locked his door? Who does that remind you of?

Now I’ll think of Lewis as some creepy freak if I ever think of him again. Him and Matt Lauer.

Vulnerable Men Work To Stay Vulnerable

Normal people are as vulnerable to influences as anyone.

When the norms come across a bad influence dressed for success they give it the benefit of the doubt.

“They can’t be that bad,” is a very kind observation.

I remember cruising on the dirt roads around Sprague River, Oregon with my dad in 1991.

We listened to President Bush’s Supreme Court nomination hearings on the radio. Clarence Thomas called the hearings a high tech lynching.

“This guy’s got a problem with himself.”

“His biggest is calling his hearing a ‘high tech lynching.'”

“I heard that.”

“I’ve never been to a lynching, but it doesn’t happen in the Capitol.”

My old man had never been a fan of crying victim as a defense against credible accusations. He was one of the Silent Generation who worked on being a vulnerable man.

He got better as he aged.

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The years rolled on as they do.

My dad died and Clarence Thomas became a silent justice doing the court’s work.

I like to think Justice Thomas had more to do, then came the 2000 presidential election.

Ground zero for the fierce post-election contest was Florida, where George Bush’s brother Jeb sat as Governor, and his state campaign co-chair Katherine Harris was conveniently positioned as Secretary of State, the official vote counter. 

This is when Florida had a sketchy count, the sort of count Trump called for and didn’t get from Georgia in 2020.

The New York Times lamented: “The reality, therefore, is that Mr. Bush’s victory in the most fouled-up, disputed and wrenching presidential election in American history was so breathtakingly narrow that there is no way of knowing with absolute precision who got the most votes.”

Clarence Thomas back then:

At the time the Court was hearing and deciding Bush v. Gore, Clarence Thomas’s wife Virginia was working for the conservative Heritage Foundation, gathering resumes for appointments in an anticipated Bush administration. The calls for Thomas to recuse himself, as 28 USC § 455 requires of judges if a spouse has “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding,” were to no avail. 

Baffling Vulnerable Men

The 2000 election was decided after the Supreme Court ruled against the Florida recount by one vote, 5-4.

One conservative Supreme Court justice voted to give the election win to the son of the president who appointed him. It has a ‘circle of life’ feel, doesn’t it?

But there’s more.

There are rumors that Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife Virginia is such a Mark Meadows fan that she texted Trump’s chief her support for him to fix the outcome.

Clarence Thomas is right in there:

In February 2021 the Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump’s challenges to the elections result, however Mr Thomas dissented from the decision, calling it “baffling”.

Speaking for vulnerable men everywhere, what has to happen to make someone turn against the decency of good people you influence with every word and decision and opinion?

Who rewired Justice Clarence Thomas and his lovely wife Ginny? Who plugged them into Trump?

Talk about baffling.