Don't Let the News Rain on Your Parade
It is a beautiful day where I live today. I took my dogs for a walk and they so enjoyed it that they wanted to keep on walking so we went several blocks more than we usually go.
While the dogs were busy barking their greetings to other canines in the neighborhood, I was trying to compose a thought as to what really matters. I kept getting competing ideas:
On the one hand, I thought about the recent news that President Obama released his long-form birth certificate. I am not sure how the certificate really matters to any of us except the group of people who stir up support by attacking Obama.
What if Obama really were born outside the United States? Would it make him any different than the late George Romney, a Republican governor in the 1960s who ran for President despite having been born in Mexico?
That Governor Romney was the father of a current possible presidential Republican candidate, Mitt Romney. Some political observers made an issue out of Romney’s birthplace but that did not stop Romney from competing until unrelated problems (like being a gaffe-prone candidate) forced him to withdraw from the 1968 race.
The idea that really mattered to me was closer to home. I want more beautiful days like this one. I want to be able to walk around my city without fear of crime or pollution. I want to take pride in where I live.
I don’t know what, if anything, political contests can or will do about these kinds of issues. But if we get too distracted from issues which demonstratively do not matter, we lose track of the ones that do.
Sometimes the rain really does rain on our parade. That’s why we should appreciate the parade when it happens.
It is a beautiful day where I live today. I took my dogs for a walk and they so enjoyed it that they wanted to keep on walking so we went several blocks more than we usually go.
While the dogs were busy barking their greetings to other canines in the neighborhood, I was trying to compose a thought as to what really matters. I kept getting competing ideas:
On the one hand, I thought about the recent news that President Obama released his long-form birth certificate. I am not sure how the certificate really matters to any of us except the group of people who stir up support by attacking Obama.
What if Obama really were born outside the United States? Would it make him any different than the late George Romney, a Republican governor in the 1960s who ran for President despite having been born in Mexico?
That Governor Romney was the father of a current possible presidential Republican candidate, Mitt Romney. Some political observers made an issue out of Romney’s birthplace but that did not stop Romney from competing until unrelated problems (like being a gaffe-prone candidate) forced him to withdraw from the 1968 race.
The idea that really mattered to me was closer to home. I want more beautiful days like this one. I want to be able to walk around my city without fear of crime or pollution. I want to take pride in where I live.
I don’t know what, if anything, political contests can or will do about these kinds of issues. But if we get too distracted from issues which demonstratively do not matter, we lose track of the ones that do.
Sometimes the rain really does rain on our parade. That’s why we should appreciate the parade when it happens.
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