They’ve got to be PEP (pretty effing powerful)… words used for shaping opinion.
By the way, that’s some word… that word ‘effing,’ sounding about the same as the word it’s really meant to be… but spelled a bit differently, it somehow seems less offensive, and somewhat acceptable.
‘Effing’ can stir emotions… if something’s an effing disaster, an effing joke, or an effing boondoggle.
In a recent editorial, March 30, Daily Post Editor Bill Hudson mentioned local elected leaders, living, perhaps, “in a fantasy world filled with tourists and recreation.”
Fantasies can be really enticing, except when realities come barging in. Like when, as Mr. Hudson has been noting in his editorials, there’s not nearly enough workforce housing for workers needed at hotels, restaurants and other businesses.
With communities throughout the nation, and worldwide, facing their own affordable housing crises, reality is barging in on a whole lot of public officials. This problem has been brewing, for a long time.
What’s also been brewing, more recently — often among ultra-conservative politicians — is the word ‘woke,’ which, perhaps, is becoming an effing joke. Since the word’s exact meaning isn’t all that clear, it can’t be ‘PEP’… of that, we can be pretty sure.
But one thing, it seems, that could stand some peppiness is the idiom ‘Live and let live’… being open-minded and tolerant of others.
“Conservatives are using the tragedy in Nashville,” another school shooting incident, “to push their anti-trans agenda,” according to an article in Vox.
“Multiple far-right lawmakers and commentators responded to the shooting with transphobic statements.”
Is it really that necessary for politicians wanting government out of our lives to be meddling with folks, simply because of differing life choices?
A teachers union official at a recent American Federation of Teachers meeting, was, with regard to gun laws, “calling for a reaction similar to ‘other great democracies,’” according to an article in Raw Story. “How many lives will be shattered before we have the courage to do what Scotland did, what Australia did, what New Zealand did,” asked the teachers union president, Randi Weingarten.
Perhaps in reference to Ms. Weingarten’s views, Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert noted… “Maybe one thing we need to address is we’re not a democracy. “So quit with that!” And she went on to say, according to the article, that “We are a constitutional republic.”
Maybe, like me, you’re scratching your head right about now, as you’re processing her words.
“Boebert demanded schools retool their curriculum to fit her civics lesson,” noted Raw Story reporter David Edwards.
One thing about her observations, we might conclude… there’s an effing something about them, that’s for damn sure!
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.