Take Five

Here are five brief observations swirling in my head waiting to get out:

1. There was a time in our recent past when just one ill-advised comment could cause a politician or celebrity to lose their job or status. I’m thinking of Jimmy the Greek, George Romney and Ed Muskie to name a few. Today we have a number of politicians, pundits and journalists who make their livelihoods and careers based on almost daily ill-advised comments, reporting and opinions.
2. Remember when the best way to judge a person was based on what they do, not necessarily what they say. So many people today are more impressed with empty hype than performance. A well delivered promise that may or may not come to fruition carries more weight than actual results.
3. The day when we all signed up for AOL decades ago was the day that we forfeited our rights of privacy.
4. The sole criterion for many Americans on the status and success of the US presidency is that the current officeholder is not named Trump.
5. My grandmother died in 1971. She had tens of thousands of dollars representing her life savings in a mattress. She never had a bank account. I suspect that given she lived through the bank failures of the 1930s that she feared putting her money in a bank. Interestingly enough, if she was alive today, she would be earning about the same amount of interest income from putting her money in a mattress than putting her money in a bank.