In the News

Bullying may be defined as the activity of repeated, aggressive behavior intended to hurt another person, physically or mentally. Bullying is characterized by an individual behaving in a certain way to gain power over another person.

There are a few keywords in there... but the first one that strikes me as rather important is repeated. There's a story in the news about a news anchor receiving a single email from a viewer concerned about her image on TV (being that she was overweight). One email... and she responded with an anti-bullying segment. From what I've heard of the email, it sounded like criticism, yes, but not bullying. There was no name calling, and this wasn't one email in a string of emails... it was a single email voicing concern about her weight and what it portrayed to her audience.

Now I'm not 'pro-bullying', by any means. I was bullied in school - I think most kids were, at some point, in the mental way, at least. Some, then, became bullies because of the bullying. Others, like myself, shrugged it off and went on with our lives. But it seems like the definition of what was considered bullying was much narrower back then...

Which leads me to the next issue... why do we shelter our children so much?? When are we going to stop living in denial (and putting our kids in that same state of mind) about 'real life' and just reality in general?? The world is not perfect. We will not always get our way. There will be bad days in all of our lives. Not everyone is a nice person, nor can you expect every person to be nice. There is NOT a logical excuse for everything that is bad - sometime 'bad' just comes the poor decisions made by someone. And not everyone can be the winner (or the person in charge). And just because someone says something negative to you does not make it bullying!

Wake up, people! Political correctness and all this other BS is making us soft! Suddenly, we can't take a joke, nor can we tell one for fear of 'offending' someone. Your child can't play in a park without you hovering over them, or you're thought to be a bad parent. Any progress we've made in equality of race and gender is slowly being diminished as we get to a point where if you look at someone of another race or gender, you're 'looking at them the wrong way' and have authorities called on you. Okay... that may be extreme, but it seems to be going that way...

I don't know who started the PC craze and who felt it was their authority to determine than anything negative is bad/mean and shouldn't be said or done. But to those people, I say this - you really f'd up this country! Every country has their issues, but we're the only one that seems to have an 'excuse' for every 'issue' we have, and it's never our own fault. Because we've become soft. We don't know how to own up and take responsibilities for what happens to us. We don't teach the next generation how to be strong and work hard to get what you want. Instead, we teach them that it's all happiness and goodness in the world, and you get what you want, because everyone deserves to win. WTF?? It's no wonder we're practically owned by China.