The Aunt Jemimah Post

On Monday, May 16, 2014, New York City Major, Bill de Blasio came on the View and declared it Barbara Walters Day! That Friday, via national TV, many of us gladly celebrated the retirement of the legendary Barbara Walters: television’s first female news anchor, master interviewer, and founder, executive producer and co-host of The View, the award-winning primetime talk show. An ardent fan of the View, I will miss Barbara’s wise insights and spicy sense of humor dearly, but glad that she has taken the well-deserved gift of retirement. At least, that’s the way I felt when I retired…much to my surprise.

Unlike graduations, proms, weddings, child births, job promotions and such other joyous yet oft-stressful life events, at its heart, retirement is the most solemn of all occasions. Finally, we have reached that glorious state between happiness and sadness, and are truly ready to ease on down the road. Soon, a new attitude arises within us that simply says: hey! I don’t have to take no mess off of nobody, no mo’. And the mantle of Certified Senior Citizen [1] is rightly assumed; learning still, yet able to trust past experiences and help guide others along the way.

The Shah’s Low Opinion of Women Still Resonates

In the ABC 1977 interview with the then Shah of Iran, Barbara confronts him with previous quotes attributed to him where he basically said: women count only if they are beautiful, graceful and stay feminine; they have never produced a Michelangelo, a Bach, or even a great cook.”[2] The Shah responds saying: “not with the same words, no” but soon admits to his Michelangelo-Bach reference.

When Barbara skillfully asks whether women are equal to men if they have the same intelligence or ability, the well-liked Shah (“king”) then puts his royal foot in his very arrogant mouth; and unabashedly says: “Not so far. Maybe you will become in the future. We can always have some exceptions.” Wow, it’s hard to believe that a man of his prominence could still hold such backward thoughts about women, particularly since a woman gave birth to him and likely breast-fed him afterwards. But, he did, according to this interview.

Sadly, a few years later, the Shah, formerly known as Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, would pass on July 27, 1980, aged 60. Even more sadly is that his low opinion of woman, likely instilled during childhood, still seems to resonate in his country and elsewhere in the region, which is a major cause of unrest between our countries. Of course, this is not to say that all Western men highly regard women in general, no not at all. Besides the progressive men in the West, those who revere women as people rather than objects, we still have backward idiots here who delight in believing that women are inferior to them in all respects. Yet, according to most current reports, particularly from the East, women’s rights are generally far more advanced in Western society; thus, we continue to help advance women in the world.

Monica Lewinsky and Her Fall From Grace

In the beginning, many naturally hated the inappropriate affair between the president and his attractive young intern, while others, who adored Bill Clinton and his family (and still do), were far more forgiving. Still neither party had actually committed a crime. That is until fear and public outrage hit the fan! So they lied under oath and unwittingly fell into a meticulously laid trap set by Dark Forces long before their fall! Sadly, now in trouble with the law, the erring parties scrambled for their lives and the drama begins. Though why they were strategically targeted and later entrapped by the ego’s Dark Forces is far beyond the scope of this article, yet there is a lesson here. Seems Monica Lewinsky is still trying to save her soul.

Of course, in order to save our soul we must first be willing to look within, stop blaming others for our decline and do the hard work of self inquiry, which may take awhile. And, most of all, do take responsibility for our own happiness. Meanwhile, my advice to Monica is to use her advance intelligence to forget about the past, her past, and focus on her life right now; forget about what others say about her, find meaningful work that will give peace and purpose, and actively seek the proper way to rid the mind of haunting memories: A Course in Miracles, published by the Foundation for Inner Peace, would truly help.

Did Society Fail Monica Lewinsky, President Clinton and Itself Eventually?

Since society’s collective values tend to influence each of us, depending upon our natural instincts, it is highly likely that the absence of life principles generally taught at home and reinforced in our public schools and communities at-large, which has been in decline for decades, might well have enabled Monica’s fall from grace simply by supporting the decisions she made to flirt with disaster. While watching her very candid interview with Barbara Walters back in 1998, I got the distinct impression that Monica had no real sense of the consequences that her initial flirtations, which led to her affair with the president, a married man, might bring. In fact, I remember her being very giddy, yet quite bold and confident as she described such flirtatious encounters and was very upset by her outwardly lack of scruples.

Then, of course, my homespun values were still stuck in the Victorian Era where I either had to be properly introduced to a man or meet him at known social gatherings. So I did not even know how to flirt…glad I loved music and dance. And since my rather quiet world was far from that of Monica’s and the media had not begun to widely mention such things, I had little knowledge that women of Monica’s generation thought nothing of so-called casual sex as they had come to call it. Yet, casual sex was on the rise in the 90s and folks were doing it in their offices, in the streets, up against the wall, on the ceilings and any other unlikely place both in the higher and lower echelons of our society where traditional warnings were no longer valued.

Thus, disaster was lurking just around the corner and successfully exploited the highest office in our land at its first opportunity. Still, we did not learn a damn thing. Sadly, today, the term “casual sex” has morphed into “friends with benefits,” way too many families are in poverty, public education is nearly gutted, social welfare services, the hallmark of our U.S. Constitution, are under constant attack by insane lawmakers, whom we keep voting into office, our election process is virtually corrupted by so-called dark money, too many of our children are either hooked on drugs or technology’s latest gadgets, and the centuries old fight for a living wage is back among us…yet, still, we don’t get it!

Oh, Be Warned America, Be Warned, Frederick Douglass Restated 

It’s time to wake up America and save our great society before it’s too late. Thus, we must resolve to give up our collective hatred of the wrong people, give up our stupid obsession with “casual sex” and see each other as fellow human beings rather than objects of pleasure. Otherwise, one day, there will be no one left to blame!

(Revised due to technical difficulties, small revisions made, originally published May 22, 2014) 

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[1] From the genius of Jazz legend, Mose Allison: Certified Senior Citizen, a truly funny commentary on the realities of retirement, is a song on his intuitive album titled “The Earth Wants You, check it out here.

[2] Interview shown on ABC Special, Barbara Walters Her Story, aired Friday May 16, and verified here, a 2004 New York Times article titled “The Last Empress” a book review by Elaine Sciolino.

© Delores L. Adams and The Aunt Jemimah Post 2012-2014. All rights reserved.

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