You know what I mean. I don’t need to repeat it. The quotes around “said” in the title of this piece are because there is no recording or video of this, no solid proof that I’ve seen. Maybe there is and if so I’d want to see it, or hear it, because I am in that uncomfortable place where I believe it was said- but have to filter it through the accounts and opinions of others instead of verifying it with incontrovertible evidence. I have to think about it with the balance of what others say and what I have seen and heard in the past.

It’s one of my weaknesses, I sometimes spend too much time in internal deliberation before making a judgement. Maybe it’s the Libra in me, I don’t know.

But one thing I am very good at is reading “tells”, analyzing words, behavior, body language, demonstrated character and patterns. I’m also pretty good at spotting a weak or specious defense of abhorrent behavior offered up by those desperate to defend the indefensible (because they benefit when they do).

Case in point,  Jesse Watters, the Fox News version of Kelly Bundy, made the dismissive observation that  “…this is how the forgotten men and women in America talk at the bar.”

But his time spent working with grouchy pervert Bill O’Reilly, doing his hard hitting ambush interviews of Occupy Wall Street stoners and bikini-clad spring break coeds, may have made his thinker soft and broke his integrity meter.

It isn’t “how the forgotten people talk in barrooms around the country”. Trust me, I have been in barrooms with those folks. Grew up with them. And yeah…the “talk” can get kinda filthy, but there’s some differences:

• The filth is usually for dramatic effect, emphasis and punctuation-not used to belittle and objectify some “others” for their “otherness”.
• It’s very rarely done with absolute disrespect of anyone who doesn’t either fit a preconceived image of success or human potential, or occupy a similar station in life.
• It’s almost never getting “talked” by someone who themselves spent a lifetime of unearned privilege and entitlement while also going to great lengths to avoid the obligation and efforts. Those talkers have lived lives of responsibility, worked hard, served their nation bravely and proudly (not just by going to a military academy)
• These people, unless we’re talking about a different breed of the forgotten, would give you the shirt off their back and respect and appreciate those who they know would do the same. Can we say that about the man-baby in chief?

The way Trump talks is how entitled, fake-fancy, full-of-themselves and empty-of-heart people talk when only they can hear-except he is loud and proud with it, unaware that well-adjusted and decent human beings capable of empathy just-don’t-talk-that-way. Maybe they do in the country clubs, and men’s clubs, in places those “forgotten people” could never afford to go to and wouldn’t want to go anyways because arrogant ***holes unwilling to do the work and make the sacrifices they, their peers, their parents, and their parents’ parents made make good beer taste bad.

Jan 15 2018