A Lost Reader 2.0

Wow! Who would've ever thought I'd have a positive thing to say about Bill O'Reilly? I'll be honest, certainly   not  me. But the world is full of infinite possibilities and this one has come to pass. A group, One Million Moms, has declared a boycott against JC Penney because Ellen DeGeneres is their current spokesperson. This organization says that JC Penney--by hiring an openly homosexual spokesperson--is taking a side (apparently the "wrong" side) in a "culture war" that is in direct contrast to the "traditional families" that actually shop at JC Penney and that they should   fire  DeGeneres as their spokesperson. O'Reilly discussed this issue on his " Unresolved Problems " segment and actually defended JC Penney's right to choose who they want and encouraged the organization to spend their money elsewhere if that was their prerogative. Further, he compared this boycott to the McCarthy-era communist blacklists d...

Dear Susan G. Komen Foundation, Although I am glad that you "reversed" your decision and will continue to fund Planned Parenthood, I find your utter lack of forethought of the decision to do so in the first place disturbing . This was further highlighted by your apparent lack of de-funding all  programs under investigation (i.e., your $7.5 million donation to Penn State to fund cancer research). Women's health is important, period. You forgot that, and I will venture to guess, it's because you've allowed the organization to get caught up in some political mumbo-jumbo--an arena that women's health should be no part of. I'm disturbed that in your "race for the cure," you felt that it only applied to a certain segment of women and not to all  women, especially those of lesser means. You have shown your true colors, and forgot that under that pink ribbon, we all bleed red . And I'm sorry for that because I once--not so long ago--truly b...

Yesterday, Paula Deen came forward and said that she had type 2 diabetes and had recently become the spokesperson for some diabetic drug. Although it was widely suspected that Deen was diabetic and others ( Anthony Bourdain ) had publicly slammed her cooking style and recipes, she waited until 3 years after her diagnosis to make a public statement. What floored me are the comments that I read (and you can still read) on any  electronic version of the article discussing her announcement. Somehow, people are far more uneducated about a disease that affects about one third of the populace. Many of the comments slammed Deen's cooking style (lots of butter) and how she ate that resulted in her developing type 2 diabetes. I am not surprised to be honest, unless you know someone or you yourself have a medical condition that you know much about how the disease process works, and this is for any  disease. Paula Deen's cooking is a style of cooking. Unless you are part of her famil...

Plano-based Dr. Pepper, please explain to me what it is that you won by shutting down the bottling operations in Dublin (Texas) of their sugar cane-based Dr. Pepper, most commonly known as Dublin Dr. Pepper . The Dr Pepper/Snapple Group reached a "settlement" with the Dublin-based bottling group in which the smaller, locally owned Dublin Dr Pepper group agreed to not make, bottle, or sell anything with the name or logo of Dublin Dr Pepper on it and also cease selling their pure cane sugar form of the Dr Pepper drink. I don't drink Dr Pepper or what was once Dublin Dr Pepper, so for me this isn't about some better-tasting product or a better-priced product. This is about how a big corporation, who had nothing to fear from the small business, forced the said small business to shut down its production and in the process layoff 14 workers and essentially destroy Dublin tourism and their tradition of renaming the town "Dr Pepper" every summer in honor of th...