Welcome to #SMH Fridays! Obviously, that’s Internet speak for “shaking my head” Fridays, but you already knew that.
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Here at Red Alert Politics we spend entirely too much time on the internet and some of the things that we see out there are just absolutely astonishing/mind-blowing/horrifying/disgusting/trendy/weird/insert any adjective here. As such, we have decided to start #SMH Fridays as a way to share those stories with you.
In this weekly series, our staff members will share their favorite “That’s So Internet” story in this post, along with their unfiltered commentary. Here’s last week’s edition for the gist of what it’s all about. Enjoy!
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Even though there are DNA testing backlogs all over the country in rape cases, apparently the best use of DNA testing is to find out which waiter spit in a customer’s drink at a Chili’s in Clay, New York.
Gregory Lamica was formally charged with disorderly conduct after spitting into the drink of Ken Yerdon. Yerdon, a patron of the Chili’s with his wife Julie Aluzzo-Yerdon seemingly annoyed Lamica by complaining about undercooked broccoli and missing chips, according to a lawsuit they filed recently.
Things got worse when Yerdon asked for a drink refill. Lamica took the cups out of sight, and didn’t make eye contact when he returned, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported.
Yerdon told the newspaper that while he was driving home, the lid of the cup popped off, and he saw a “giant loogie.”
The managers apologized but did not admit anyone at Chili’s was responsible, Yerdon said. They kept the waiter in an office, he said.
The managers gave Yerdon coupons and a refund for the meal, he said. But they didn’t fire the waiter, the Yerdons said.
“We just felt like he needed to be terminated immediately,” Julie said. “To do something like that was so vile and beyond the pale. We couldn’t believe it.”
As he left, Yerdon saw Lamica in the parking lot, according to a state police report.
“I said, ‘Why did you spit in my drink?'” Yerdon’s statement to police said. “He was bawling. He just kept walking with his apron in his hand and he didn’t answer me. I said to him, ‘You wouldn’t be crying if you didn’t spit in my drink.’ He said, ‘I don’t want to lose my job.’ ”
The Yerdons called the state police. An investigator questioned Lamica at Chili’s and he denied spitting in the cup, the Yerdons said. But he agreed to let the trooper take a swab of saliva, they said.
Three months later, the DNA results came back. The troopers called Lamica into their barracks and he again denied spitting into Yerdon’s drink, according to the Yerdons. Then the troopers confronted Lamica with the DNA results and he confessed, the Yerdons said.
Your tax dollars at work people. And despite the punishment and the gross overuse of the police force, the main lesson here is just exactly what the movie “Waiting” taught me back in 2005:
This week, Lauren Conrad banned the words “skinny,” “thin,” and “slim” from her blog, LaurenConrad.com, because they’re “body shaming.”
From a letter to her followers:
I don’t really have a problem with Conrad’s overarching idea—not everyone “skinny” is “healthy” (for example, me) and a health and fitness blog should educate people about that.
But buying into the idea that “banning” words is the way to change hearts and minds—that I do have a problem with. Language is a defiant and evolving thing, and no matter how much you “ban” a word, if the concept still exists, it will find a way out of people’s mouths.
And is a word like “slim” really “body shaming”? Let’s not define down actual shaming by pretending that using any descriptive adjective of someone with a thigh gap is traumatic for you.
On Thursday, Hillary Clinton accepted a lifetime achievement award at Texas Southern University and delivered a speech on voting rights. But I’m not here to focus on what she said — I’m here to shake my head at the university.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg’s Jennifer Epstein pointed out on Twitter that the school advised reporters in a press release Wednesday that the press would have “NO” (yes, that’s NO IN CAPITAL LETTERS) opportunities to interview Clinton.
From confirmation note from Texas Southern Univ, which is hosting Hillary Clinton’s voting rights speech tomorrow pic.twitter.com/87PPv11jHu
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) June 3, 2015
“Her speech will be her interview,” the school cautioned.
Though the press release was later updated to remove the harsh words about Clinton’s so-called “interview” (likely because Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill knew the campaign would catch flak), I am shaking my head at the fact that the university had resigned itself to helping Hillary on her crusade to avoid the press.
Update from TSU has pared down bathroom and wifi details and no “her speech will be her interview” pic.twitter.com/dczB08dQXJ
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) June 3, 2015
Our schools and students should be supporting a dialogue with the Democratic presidential candidate, not helping her dodge every inquiry from a reporter that she can!
Let the journalists “barricaded” in the arena and subjected to the “media-only restrooms” ask a question, TSU! #SMH.
I can’t deal with seeing one more ad, Buzzfeed post, or music video featuring the man bun.
While it looks great on men who have absolutely no imperfections to begin with, those of us who are so self-conscious that we wear a burka to the beach simply cannot pull it off.
Jared Leto, Zayn Malik, and Brock O’Hearn might be able to look like Thor while wearing a man bun, but unless you have perfect hair, you’re just going to look like Tom Hanks in Cast Away or someone off their meds.
So unless you’re a model, a musician, an actor, or a hipster whose parents are paying your bills, the man bun is not for you.
So here’s to the man bun and hoping its 15 minutes end soon.
This week I am shaking my head at students at the University of Washington and their ‘Check Your Privilege Party.’ The irony of this event was mind-blowing. Students that were supposedly advocating for acceptance and equality are attacking and shaming another group on campus. Check out the hundreds of comments on this Facebook event page if you really want to lose your faith in humanity.
Here is the event description:
Unfortunately, this is just one example of people who choose to blame the Greek system for problems on their campus such as racial inequality and sexual assault. Isolated incidents involving hazing and drinking are often what make the news, while the good things typically go unnoticed.
There are nine million college students involved in Greek organizations on a national level. These are not all bad people. In fact, the Greek system is the largest network of volunteers in the U.S., with members donating over 10 million hours of volunteer service each year, and millions of dollars to charitable organizations. Overall, the Greek community is largely made up of student leaders who go on to do great things. I’m not saying that some students couldn’t stand to “check their privilege” every once in awhile, but it shouldn’t be done in a hateful way like this.
