Civility made headlines across the land today for the boorish outburst by Representative Joe Wilson during President Obama’s Address to Congress last night.  Responding to the statement by Mr. Obama that illegal immigrants would not receive health insurance under the President’s plan, Representative Wilson burst “You lie!”  Not since Claude Rains went berserk in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington in 1939, has there been such drama before a joint session of Congress.

There is no excuse for poor manners.  Ever.  Manners are a universal language that allow us to show off all we know about self-respect.   Much has been made on cable television about Wilson’s lack of respect for the President and for the setting, but they don’t get it.  In disrupting a dignified venue such as a Presidental Address to Congress, Wilson showed no respect for himself.

Now the attention turns to the people who actually think what Wilson did was great.  They’re lining up behind the guy and thanking him for saying in front of a national television audience of 21 million people what they had been saying to an audience the size of the water cooler or the dinner table.  They’re buying freshly minted t-shirts that state “You Lie” on the front.  This I think, is actually funny.  Some clever entrepreneur seized the most famous two words of the month, perhaps the year, put them on a 99 cent shirt and took orders for 16.99.  Admit it.  You wish you’d thought of it first.

If Wilson knows what’s best for him, he’ll take this mandate, go home to South Carolina, and develop a “You Lie” business plan.  If the owner of Doug’s Fish Fry can name a baloney sandwich after the First Family vacationing in his home town of Skaneateles, New York, Joe Wilson should be able to create an entire menu of sandwiches at the You Lie Deli. You Lie about Health Care, featuring steroid-fed beef and congealed gravy on a bed of freedom fries soaked in trans fats, You Lie about the Budget, a thin coating of peanut butter and store-brand jelly on two slabs of wonder bread for $16.99, and You Lie about Socialism, a free all-you-can-eat buffet until you get up to leave and then you are charged your entire paycheck.  And that’s before the tip.

As quickly as supporters of Wilson’s democratic challenger raised $400,000.00 in the wake of “You Lie”, websites popped up to pay homage to the new phrase destined to take it’s place among the annals of famous political and funny phrases such as “read my lips, no new taxes”, “I did not have sex with that woman”, “I am the decider”, “it depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is”; only “You Lie” will be famous not for being spoken by a President, but by a heckler.

It’s comforting to know that Representative Wilson telephoned to apologize to the President after being told to do so by the Republican leadership.  Now that’s contrition!  Imagine if he’d said no.  They could have pulled out the reliable old waterboard to get him to do it.  Or Dick Cheney could have suggested they go hunting this weekend.   Oops.  Like the side of the face of a lawyer,  you looked just like a deer.

Have any You Lie ideas that can make us some money?  Any sandwiches I neglected to put on the menu?  Now’s the time to send them in.  If we don’t, someone else will, and I need the cash to buy a t-shirt.

In the nearly two weeks since Harvard scholar Robert Gates Jr. was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for breaking into his own home, we see enduring racial bias flying in the face of the first black President we hoped would guide us through this prickly topic.

Barack Obama declared Cambridge police officers “acted stupidly” for handcuffing and arresting Gates at the home near Harvard University.  That’s because Gates rented the property, and upon returning from a trip with a friend who picked him up from the airport, a friend who also happens to be black, the two men encountered a stuck front door.  They did what everyone does when humidity gets the best of wood, they shoulder-butted it until it gave way and they walked in.

Trouble is, neighbors thought this looked like a break-in and they called police.  When police arrived to question the two men, Gates became broiling mad.  The white sergeant took that as a threat, slapped handcuffs on the 58 year old professor and hauled him to the police station on a disorderly conduct charge.

With Gates threatening a lawsuit against the Cambridge police department, and the department refusing to apologize,  the President took the firestorm and poured gasoline on it all the way from the White House.  For two full days the attention he needed for his health care initiative was instead focused on the use of the word “stupid” to describe the actions of Cambridge police.

As of today, the temperature is down and Gates told the Associated Press it’s time to “move on”.   But the issue of race, in spite of the landmark speech on the topic by then Presidential candidate Obama, and his subsequent victory in November, refuses to die.

As one who lives within Syracuse city limits and is an advocate for her son’s school district where black students outnumber whites, I’ve seen how complicated race is, from both sides.   Not content to live in the suburbs and declare the city unsafe without ever living there, walking the neighborhoods, and trying the schools, race has touched me in two stereotypical ways, one of which opened my eyes.

First, in 26 years of home ownership in Syracuse, I’ve had one instance where the safety of my family was threatened.  It was just before daybreak, election day 1993 or 94, when my first husband Steve awoke to some sounds coming from the family room downstairs in our home in Bradford Hills.  He got up to investigate, and in the shadows stood a young man in a dark hooded sweatshirt just outside the window he had pried open.  He had one leg halfway in.

I don’t know who was more surprised, the burglar or Steve because Steve was young then too, and strong, and he ran his hand along the bank of lights on the wall to fully illuminate the first intruder we ever had.  An intruder who was stereotypically black.

The burglar took off running and was never caught and we never had trouble again at that house or this one, but the national statistic that blacks are incarcerated seven times more often than whites made sense to me after that night.  From that  one incident, blacks committed one-hundred times the crimes against me than whites.

Here’s something else that makes sense.  It’s not easy being black.  I know, because I was black for an evening and I saw in fifteen seconds what every black person must feel all their lives.

One summer night years ago the anchors for my television station WTVH,  were asked to give some time to a group of underprivileged children at a Syracuse Chief’s baseball game.  A local business donated it’s pricey and exclusive box seats and indoor air conditioned space with a bathroom and small kitchenette.   The children and their parents delightfully went back and forth between the outdoor seats and the indoor ones where a picnic dinner was available.

I don’t recall the arrangement with the company, but I guess families of the business that owned that box were still allowed access to the seats outdoors, because at some point, as the interior room was filled with black mothers and their children seated at the tables, a young white mom and her two little children walked in.   Other than me, the mom was the only whitey in a sea of black.  I was seated with some black moms behind the door so that white woman didn’t see me.  She only saw black and her body language screamed fear.

You would think the room were filled with inmates.  That young mom with pale skin and blond hair like me grabbed a tight hold on her children and ushered them quickly through the room to the box seats outdoors.    She didn’t say hello, she didn’t say excuse me, she didn’t even look anyone in the eye, as if doing so might turn her into a black criminal like these women and their little children.  Because of that, she didn’t see me, so for that brief walk through the room I was as black as everyone else.

I will never forget how offended I was for these women.  Had the blond mom stopped to have a conversation, she would know everyone there probably wanted what she wanted; children who get good grades, have good manners and who don’t terrorize their brothers and sisters.

Worse still, the black moms and kids didn’t seem to notice the slight.  It was as if they are so conditioned to this treatment they don’t even see it when it occurs.    I hurt for these women who deserved better.   I still do.  They were such sports about it.

I guess that’s why the outrage of the Harvard professor who was arrested for pushing open the door of his home is understandable; why the black community rallies when an incident like this goes national.  It’s an opportunity to say enough is enough of what happens to them everyday in ways too small to make the news.

I think it’s why public opinion about the O.J. Simpson trial was so  outrageously racial.  Even highly educated blacks ignored the DNA evidence showing the chances of Simpson not being connected to the murder of his wife and her friend statistically beyond the population of the planet.

On the other hand, when officers responded to my home the morning of the break-in,  once again they searched for a black suspect.   I had no opportunity to order up the color of my intruder, he just showed up black.

My last experience with racial bias became a joke in the family.  My Charlie was on the Sherman Park Bulldogs football team when he was a squirt little kid.  He was the only white boy on the team.  Each Saturday when I would arrive to watch the Bulldogs play at their home field in Thornden Park, all the black moms politely pointed out the other side of the field with it’s white teams from the suburbs, as if to say my team was over there.

“Nope”, I told them with a smile.  It became a running joke how many times these well-intentioned folks directed me to the opposing team as I took my place on the grass and let everyone know my color was their color; Bulldog blue and orange.

1. “Where’s my teleprompter?”

2. Says aaannnddd too many times to buy time while gathering thoughts.

3. Should fix the economy before fixing anything else.

4. Chose a harsh critic to be his V.P.

5. Willing to negotiate with terrorists.

6. Any enemy of Rush’s is an enemy of mine.

7. Spending money faster than it can be printed.  Submitted by Ken Temple.

8. He likes to smoke.  Submitted by Carson Metcalf.

9. He believes too much. Submitted by CNYer.

10. The Bailout encourages bad behavior. Submitted by Dr. Bill Dalton

Loved the answers everyone.  Thanks. Maureen

1. Wouldn’t give up the Blackberry.

2. Looks at his wife when she speaks and appears interested in what she is saying.

3. Made two real cute kids.

4. The way he walks.

5. Doesn’t wear a jacket and tie to walk across the White House lawn to Air Force One.

6.  Uses “the google” better than his predecessor.

7. He’s not G.W. , submitted by Marc.

8. He picked a Syracuse University alum to be his Vice President, submitted by Denise, an S.U. alum.

9. Picks Republicans for his Cabinet, submitted by MAMACH

10.  Comics find him harder to parody than his predecessor., MAMACH

The last four are up for grabs.  I’ll use the best responses.   Tomorrow we’ll do the reasons not to love him.

Update: Thanks to all the posters who submitted ideas!

It’s satisfying to see a U.S. President who publicly admits his mistakes, but it’s disappointing to see how he does it.  The word “screw” does not belong in any Presidential speak.  In referring to his two failed Cabinet appointments, President Obama went on several network television programs and said on each one “I screwed up”.   Mr. President, you are a brilliant and classy guy.  Please sound like it.

The dictionary offers several definitions of screw as a verb: to fasten or tighten, to undo by turning as with a bottle top, to contort by twisting, to extract or extort, to threaten, to have sexual intercourse with.  When people today say “I screwed up”, they are referencing the latter, though I’m convinced few people know it.

Because profanity has found it’s way into song lyrics, film and school buses, ordinary slang no longer sounds so bad.  All things being relative, words like screw, lousy, stupid and suck seem charming.  But they really make the user sound stupid, pardon my slang.

One of our local newscasters was accused in an online forum of saying the word “pissed” on the air.   Whether or not Dan Cummings really used the word was second to the controversy that followed over use of the word itself.  Half of the posters thought pissed is a fine word, the other half did not.

To me, it speaks to education in the home.   As a child if I used slang, I got punished.  I can’t imagine what would have happened if I was caught actually swearing.  “Lousy” was bad enough.   It’s why I’m so judgmental when I hear well-educated professionals inserting slang as if it’s acceptable.   I wonder, where was the good parenting?  And will these people drop the ball as parents themselves, perpetuating the problem until ugly words like these fail to raise the hair on the back of anyone?

Politicians and newscasters speak on camera to an audience of millions every day.  If anyone has the opportunity to set an example of proper English, it is they.  Let’s hope Michelle Obama takes her open-minded husband to task over the word “screw”, and viewers chide news anchors to do better when they slip.

I mentioned a few slang words that don’t belong in an intelligent conversation.  Let’s hear more.  If people don’t respond to this challenge of mine, I swear, I’ll be pissed.

President Obama is famously reversing many policies of the Bush administration; closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay and funding global reproductive health programs, among others.

But he quietly changed something else within the first week of his Presidency which affects the people who work for him and in a broader sense, the rest of us in some way.  He relaxed the White House dress code, which to me says less about clothing and more about the hypocrisy of Number 43.

I read about the dress code adjustment in the New York Times, which also recently offered a fascinating item about the former White House photographers.  Three of them had been invited to show their favorite photographs from the Bush years and one photo in particular stuck with me.

Aware that President Bush once scolded a White House staffer for reporting for work on a Saturday in khakis and a button down shirt, the photo in question made me angry.

It was taken at the end of a long dirt road outside the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.  There had been a summit of some sort and against the backdrop of a flat and scorched Texas landscape, stood the President, Secretary of State Condoleezaa Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney and two others whom I do not recall.   There was Rice, all buttoned up in a navy blue jacket, navy blue skirt and navy blue pumps.  Cheney of course, was equally formal in suit and tie as were the other two gentlemen in the photo.  Front and center, there was our President, the one who insisted every one of his worn out staffers wear a jacket and tie on a weekend, standing among suits in blue jeans, cowboy boots and a wrinkled shirt.   Had you not known he was the President, you would assume he was the guy hired to drive the group up the road.

I don’t need another excuse to criticize the former President, and I’m looking forward to the hopeful administration of Barack Obama.  But that photo got under my skin.   Farewell George Bush,  the President, and the hypocritical demands of others.