The Grey Blog

Words Matter

 

The truth is highly under rated.

There.

I said it.

I mean there is nothing I love more than responding to reviews on Yelp, TripAdvisor and Facebook; especially when the reviewers declare things as the truth. For example, one person recently commented on our new menu structure. They did not say that they did not like the menu or that the structure did not work for them. They declared that our menu’s “attempt at cleverness fails.” Of course, we are not actually trying to be clever but rather Mashama is paying tribute to her cooking idol – Edna Lewis. But, I get it, we failed. Another guest declared us “awful” because we suck at what we do and not at all because we had to discontinue alcohol service to a member of their group off as he was large, belligerent, aggressive and intoxicated to the point of scary.

Social media has made it so, so easy to make everyone an expert in truths. God, I love it!

The truth is the reason we elected a non-politician President? Us American people (all for one and one for all – that is America), were sick and tired of the Washington mainstream not being straight with us. Our elected officials say one thing and do another and that happens from Beltway to byway and everywhere in between.

But not the new guy. He’s a plain talker.

We wanted a straight shooter. Not in the sense of shooting someone in the middle Fifth Avenue and getting away with it ‘straight shooter’ but in the unfiltered honesty sense. Someone who tells it like it is. Someone who does not mince words and who calls it like he sees it. A ball’s a ball and a strike’s a strike. No questions asked.

Case in point, President Trump is not afraid to define all that meddlesome reporting as what it is – ‘fake news.’ He is equally not afraid to identify some lighthearted banter about grabbing women by their most intimate of areas as what it was – locker room talk. Boys being boys. He in no way meant that he finds it totally fair to leverage his power of celebrity and wealth to forcibly touch and kiss women as an opening pickup line with no fear of consequence or recourse.

Puhlease.

John Besh and Harvey Weinstein got the same memo the Pres got when they started creating the corporate culture within their own empires. Oh, and let’s not forget Bill Clinton and now, whaaaatttt, George Herbert Walker Bush. Apparently they all got that memo about the reality of locker room talk and good clean fun. Come on people, the truth is that a little pat on the rump never hurt anybody. Right

(Unless, maybe, of course if the person doing the patting did it because they felt it was their right to do it and not because they were in the consensual throes of passion and he was begging for it. In which case I say ‘spank that ass.’ No judgments here).

The fact is that what we say and how we define things matters now and will really matter in the future. Words matter. They always have and they always will. Social media and a twenty-four/seven news cycle should not strip us of decorum and honest discourse at every level because the truth is a very powerful thing.

Ask any parent, one who doesn’t have their head in the sand, this question – after Bill Clinton defined oral sex as “not sex” did it not become “not sex” to an entire generation of children? That is indeed the truth… now.

So this all begs the question – what is being defined at this very moment that will become the truth going forward?

And regardless of your political proclivities, the idea of a dynamic truth becoming the new status quo has to worry you just a little.

Doesn’t it?

– Johno

 
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