Friday's Odds and Ends, Obama, Gay Marriage and More

This has been a crazy upside-down day for me. Instead of being in my office first thing to do my blog and take care of other writing-related tasks, I was headed to town to do some publicity for a show coming to the Winnsboro Center for the Arts at the end of this month. This is the first theatrical production that I have not directed or had a role in, although I might do tech. Since I am so technically challenged, I'm holding out for other volunteers.

The Out-of-Pocket Players from The Pocket Sandwich Theatre in Dallas is taking one of their shows on the road, and Winnsboro is hosting the debut performance of "The Attack of Killer Mutant Leeches." Here is a link to a review of the show when it played in Dallas. This is just silly stuff in the vein of Animal House, and has no pretense of being great theatre. Just fun, and we all need to just have fun sometimes.

So now it is mid-afternoon and I am just now getting to my blog. I almost just posted an excerpt from my humor book, but then I decided that I just had to comment on the latest nonsense in politics.

First the media challenged Obama to make a statement about his stand on the issue of same-sex marriage following Biden's comments last weekend. Before Obama finally held his press conference mid-week, the question bandied about on the news waves was what was he waiting for? Was he refraining from taking a stand for some political reason?

Then we finally got the word from the President himself, "I think same-sex couples should be able to get married," and now pundits are all over him like fleas on a dog for using this as a political maneuver.

Maybe if the media would just stop all this speculation, except in editorials which is where speculation belongs, and politicians would talk about what they are going to do if they get into office instead of the endless attacks on opponents, the average Joe could make an informed decision.

A local political ad from Tom Leppert, who is running to represent Texas in the Senate, is one of the most absurd I've seen in a while. He goes through a rack of suits, all the while talking about each of his opponents and their shortcomings. Then he gets to the last suit and pulls it off the rack saying something like, "And we all know what happened the last time we sent an empty suit to the White House." All the suit coats have campaign buttons, and the last button reads "Obama."

This ad tells me nothing about Leppert's qualifications to represent our state in Washington. It does tell me he has a less than stellar campaign manager who came up with this "empty suit" of a campaign ad.