Showdown in Paradise

Schadenfreude: delight in another person’s misfortune.

There are moments in life when you are rewarded for your patience.  You are rewarded for putting up with busy bodies and pundits who claim to be experts and make judgments on entire generations of people.  We all deal with this.  At one point or another, we all have had to sit and listen patiently while some older person explains to us why our generation sucks.  It is the same explanations; kids today are too entitled, too spoiled, don’t know the value of a dollar, and don’t know how to work hard.  The worst part is that we get this speech from a person that we cannot argue with.  We have to sit there and listen to them with that shit eating grin on their face.  Fret not!  There is hope.  Karma rewards patience.  Life will provide you exceptions to the rule and when it happens, it is glorious. 

A while back, I was at a Paradise Bakery picking up some take out.  Inching my way to the cash register, I overheard a customer telling his order to the kid behind the counter.  The customer was this old man who looked liked Kenny Roger’s stunt double.  Kenny wanted the low fat chicken noodle soup.  I know this because I overheard him chewing out the kid behind the counter for not having chili (which they never do) even though a sister restaurant of paradise does.  This was one of those conservations where it was somehow the kids fault for them not having chili.  This break from logic encouraged me to overhear some more.  After settling on chicken noodle soup, Kenny had a further request.  He did not want a lot of juice in his soup cup.  For Kenny, “a lot” was a nebulous term, determined entirely by his liking.  Like the tower of Babel he wanted it built to heaven, with chicken.  Hand to God, one scoop had barely any juice and that was too much.  The result was that he was getting far more chicken and noodles and it was depleting the stock of soup.  After the seventh time he said that it had too much juice and he wanted him to start over, the kid remarked, “Sir, if I keep doing this then there will only be juice left for everyone else for the rest of the day”.  Kenny replied, “Are you giving me attitude son”?  Now there’s trouble in river city.

That simple request for understanding started a shit storm.  Kenny started mocking the kid and saying that we can’t have only juice in here!  No, that wouldn’t be good!  He eventually called the manager and explained how this minimum wage jockey was giving him attitude and that the customer is always right blah blah blah blah.  He was playing the victim role to such an extent, I was convinced he would plant a gun on the kid and claim that he had threatened to shoot him.  To make his point that he was right, he left the restaurant without his order.  That will show’em!  At this point, I started hysterically laughing. 

Now, recall what this kid said to incur the wrath of this village elder.  He politely explained to a customer that his request would result in other customers not being able to order a certain dish.  This resulted in an old man throwing a temper tantrum like a baby and leaving before the manager could do anything.  I was not laughing with Kenny, I was laughing at him.  He had exhibited all the symptoms that I had been told were reasons for why MY generation was no good.  He was selfish, arrogant, rude, and refused to understand the other person’s situation.  Kenny had picked a fight with someone who was not allowed to fight back, if he wanted to keep his job.  His needs were not met and he reacted childishly.

I am more than aware that some people will side with Kenny on this issue.  They will side with him because he was a customer (not a paying one) and an elderly citizen.  Many people think that if you are old then you should be able to say what you want, but what has he done to deserve to treat someone else like that?  Did he earn this distinction by not dying?  I do that every day and where’s my parade?!  The simple truth is that no generation is better than the one that came later.  Each generation has groups of winners and losers.  Anyone who disagrees with me should keep in mind, the generation that came before you does not think too highly of you.  Can’t we all just get along?  Where have I heard that before?  I am sure it will come to me later and maybe it will be hysterical as well. 

Who's in charge here?

When the 2012 Presidential election is all said and done, it will be recorded in the history books as the Gaffe election.  Most of the news coverage on the Presidential candidates have been focused on their oratory mistakes.  This has been occuring for a long time, but has come sharply into focus after the Republican and Democratic conventions.  The Greateast Presidential Gaffes! Featuring classics such as, Obama's "you didn't build that"!  Romney's "the entitled 47%"!  Biden's "they is gonna put you back in chains"!  And Paul Ryan's "It would take me too long to go through all of the math"!  All this and more for the low low price of $9.99! Act now!

All of the candidates have been caught up in this gaffe-o-rama but why?  Because no one is asking the candidates the hard questions.  The majority of the talking points are coming from stump speeches.  Speeches where the candidates can say whatever they want and no one is allowed to ask questions later.  I know what you're gonna say, "hey buddy!  That quote from Paul Ryan about math being too difficult came from an interview he did with Chris Wallace"!  Yeah it was, but Chris Wallace works for Fox News and he didn't press the issue after Ryan said math is really tough.  That interview could have been lead by anyone and they would not have pressed him because they would get locked out from future interviews and reporters who only toss softballs would be allowed to give the interviews.  This has been one of the worst election cycles for getting candidates to candidly talk about the issues.  That's why we only get gaffe coverage.  It's the only thing news channels can report on.  All candidates are guilty of this because no one is really talking about policy.  So be it.  Let's make lemonade out of lemons. 

I'm done with my fair and balanced act, so let's pick on the Republicans.  The President's gaffe's (that sounds like a horrible porno film title) have been grammatical errors.  He says the wrong word or he forgets what part of his speech he is on.  Biden is a cartoon character at this stage and gets really animated when one of his speeches gets going.  This usually results in him saying something insensitive or weird.  You can make the argument that this is unbecoming of a President and Vice President, but keep in mind, these are grammatical missteps.  We all make them.  At my sixth grade spelling bee, I was given the word Extra and I spelled it out as E-X-T-A-R.  This was broadcast to the entire school and I had to change my name and switch schools, again.  The gaffes committed by the Republican candidates are fact based (or lack thereof) gaffes.

Ryan refuses to answer questions that are more difficult than how many situps do you do every morning, so, we have to talk about Mitt.  During the second Presidential debate,  Mitt continued to comment on how it took the President two weeks after the attack on our embassy in Libya before he would refer to it as an act of terror.  This resulted in an unintentionally funny moment when the moderator said he was wrong.  This week, Mitt has been on the defensive after claiming that Chrysler, who produces the Jeep line, is going to shut down Jeep productions in America and move them to China.  This was used as a stick to beat Obama's assertion that his actions saved the auto industry.  The CEO of Chrysler immediately spoke up and said this is just a flat out lie.  The original news report that started all of this actually stated, because of the increasing popularity of American cars in Asia, Chrysler is considering opening a seperate Jeep production plant to produce vehicles that are only going to be sold in China and Asia.  No shut downs in America.  Mitt, being the business man that he is, did not realize that part of a business model should be to get your product to as many people as economically possible. 

This brings up an important quesiton, who the f*** is running that campaign?!  After the first Presidential debate, the Romney camp stated they would not let fact checkers run their campaign but this is ridiculous.  Are the staffers and speech writers not doing basic research and why?  As controlling as Romney is, I cannot imaging him writing his own speeches and doing his own homework.  That's why you have a staff.  Remember, this is basic research and the reading of statements to ascertain meaning.  Romney is going on television, acting like someone asked him the square root of something, and then he says something crazy to make people forget what was just asked. This is the reason why he is the Republican nominee and not Jon Huntsman.  If the right people had been allowed to ask questions and grill them on their answers, then it would have been known from the start that he has no idea what he is talking about.  He has changed his stance on issues and how Republican he is so many times that if he is elected President, every time he makes a speech we are going to have to ask, who's in charge here?